SHE & HIM
by Elizabeth Cicero
Summary: Isabelle is a girl from East Tennessee, looking for a change. When she ends up in the city of lights, will she also find her utter harmony in the arms of Roux, an Irish guitar player with a sweet eye for her the same? Spin off from "Gone Sideways"
1. Prologue

**SHE AND HIM - -**

* * *

**Paris, Tennessee, USA**

She had twenty-two minutes to flee the property. She had twenty-two minutes to pack up her life and move on.

Isabelle ran through the house, up and down the creaky old stairs, from room to room, gathering clothes and loose change and everything necessary in between. She packed her guitar into its ancient case, pulled on both of her scuffed brown boots and trampled back downstairs to the kitchen. High above the stove in a broken cabinet was the Mason jar that had housed their savings for almost three long years. It wasn't much, but it was enough for a plane ticket out of nowhere's-ville.

She stuffed the rolled twenties into the back pocket of her jeans, grabbed the keys to the Ford from the rack near the front door and snuck out of the house for the last time. And where she felt sure there would be tears or sadness, there was only a spell binding laugh as she tossed her bags into the truck and hightailed it through town. She didn't know where she was going, except towards the first of many big decisions. All she had to do was get away, from this suffocating town, from the responsibility of being bored to tears, and from him.

She had to go somewhere that there was no Dirk, somewhere that there was no_ 'them'_.

She had to escape and find herself for the first time in too long.

**

* * *

**

**Paris, France**

There was nothing left to discover anymore. There was nothing left of who they had once been.

So he left.

Luscany with Vianne had been a treat. It had been an experience and a passionate sort of dream to live for three years. Then he had run off to Italy, where Naples had become a semi-permanent home and hideaway. He had drifted in the aqua surf of the Italian coast, fishing and painting and making a small enough profit just to move on to the next place. Where upon he ended up back home in the Wicklow Harbor, drinking and carrying on with the old Celtic storytellers he called family. And it was there, that he'd found_ her_. The girl, the one that he swore was 'the one', whatever that meant.

Roux sailed the English Channel to the mouth of the Seine River with one consistent thought on his mind, one human being in the whole of the world, his Lara. Her crimson curls and emerald eyes haunted him every second of every wave he tumbled over, every mile he gained closure, every step he came closer to Paris and further from her memory. He didn't even know what went wrong, if anything had gone wrong at all, except to say that he was unchallenged by her, marked and satisfied and jaded by the 'used to be' temptation of his Galway girl.

He was out to find something new, something rebellious and stimulating and uninhibited like he was again.

He was out to shadow the memories with someone he was sure Paris could better deliver him.


	2. I've Just Seen a Face

**Chapter 1: I've Just Seen a Face**

She was no more than ten minutes fresh off the boat, after a ten hour flight from Memphis, and already she felt more at home in the real Paris than she ever had in the fake one she'd been born unto. She wandered down the riverside, a guitar in one hand and her duffel in the other, but no strain to speak of. Isabelle felt freer than she ever had before, more in tune with her senses and feelings and spirit, finally. There were French words being tossed around like the leaves that danced down from the street lining maples to the ground under her boots. Impossibly tempting aromas were everywhere, from a gypsy incense stand, to a pastry shop across the square, and drifting from the open air coffee shop next to where she noticed the sign for a hotel.

This was the artistic center of Paris from what she could see, with Indian belly dancers and Irish folk singers, Spanish painters and Arabian fire eaters alike, all strung about in the streets from corner to corner, entertaining and selling their souls away for a mere franc or two. It was tantalizing in ways she hadn't so much as expected, ever. She'd heard of this country and the cultural melting pot of its heart through travel guides at the beauty shop where she had worked for almost five years back home, but nothing compared to seeing it, and feeling it, and above all else, tasting it.

Somewhere in the midst of all the savoring though, as she stumbled towards the hotel's worn entrance with her bags, she found herself the victim of a man in a hurry to get somewhere else. The front of her guitar case hit his knee as he leapt down the stucco stairwell, but before he could grow aggravated with her or shout something in a language she'd never understand, Isabelle felt him falling forward, downward, off balance and into her. She gasped and tried to help him find footing again, but instead felt him controlling the situation from worsening as he wrapped his arm around her waist protectively, catching her from the narrow fall. Her bags had dropped out of her hands and she noticed when the world stopped spinning, that they were hooked around his neck.

"Got ye," he whispered as he lifted her back to her boot heels.

She tried to speak, but all that came out was an 'Oh' followed by a small, stunned smile. And then that smile became recognition of what she'd really managed to harm, the beautiful face of the Celtic sounding man she'd made a murderous attempt at with her guitar.

"Are ye alright?"

"Um yeah," she replied helplessly with a hand on the railing as she watched him lift her bags from the steps. "Thank you. I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to try and kill you."

He laughed kindly and handed her the bag, then the guitar with a sweet grin.

"No harm done, honestly. I should 'ave been walking slower."

"Huh," was all Isabelle could think to come up with, and she kicked herself for it thoroughly as she watched him turn down the steps to leave. He smiled once more with a final, "Good day, miss" and then disappeared down the alleyway for the open air market. She watched intently the easy sway of his body through the crowds of dancers and sellers as he walked away, wondering how any one man could possibly be so confident and yet so shy. It was almost as if he floated on the air around him, his loose hair tied off his neck in a wavy knot of auburn, his shoulders broad and protective same as his arms, and his legs a swaggering tribute to the kind of person he seemed to be at one quick glance.

She hated herself for letting him get away. But then again, he was a stranger. And was a very handsome, very nice, very_ unforgettable_ stranger, at that.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_Stupid, stupid fool…_he went on cursing himself for two miles back down the river, wondering why he couldn't just introduce himself, why he couldn't throw his name out at her in hopes that she'd return. That girl, that beautifully clumsy American creature had pulled so difficultly at his thoughts, and so suddenly, that Roux wasn't sure if he could walk in a straight line for much longer. He wanted to know her name. He wanted to know what made her brown eyes sparkle that way and what made her dusty locks smell so sweet.

He hated now that he didn't and as he headed ten blocks into the city, furthering his search for a certain group of specific musicians, he couldn't stop imagining the girl. He tried, _truly_, but it wouldn't suit, it wouldn't suit now at all. He had to know why she was here, why she was carrying a guitar case and walking blindly into one of the worst hotels in east Paris. He had to learn just why she couldn't find the words to speak to him, whether it was an impairment or uncertainty or better than both, if it was fear of him. He wanted to know everything that could be known about the girl with a southern tongue and a body as soft as a feather, but knew there needed to be an end to it. The point was mute, obtuse in the scheme of things, and unlikely to go anywhere but further south of his belt.

_Enough, no more about the girl, _he chanted in his head as he crossed Caprice Street for O'Sullivans, the pub he considered a home away from home when he was in Paris. He knew even before he walked inside to the dark cherry oak walls and hazy afternoon light of the place, that he would find just who and what he was after. There was a gentle guitar strum from deeper in the pub as he wandered through, bringing a wiry smirk on his face.

"No, no mate. It's all wrong. All of it, wrong."

"Well wot' the hell are ye after perfection for, Danny? We've been playing th' same goddamn way for ten years!"

"Stop arsing round', ye fools. Let's just play!"

A lingering grumble in the group brought Roux's boots to the wood floor before the stage, where he saw the faces he had been so desperate for a glimpse of, the voices of his brethren, his real family. With a wide smile he clapped his hands and teetered with a howl of, "Here here, Fiona." And all at once, the three arguing mouths hushed to the entrance of a fourth face, one they hadn't seen in far too long, one that loved so equally that it hurt to greet it again.

Fiona tossed aside her violin and leapt from the stage, directly into Roux's arms. He hugged her like a sister, a lover far too missed to be fair, kissed the top of her head and pulled her back with a beaming smile as Danny and Conner jumped to the scene.

"Roux, I can't believe you actually made it back t' us."

"Course I did. Promised, remember darlin'?"

She giggled and hugged him again tightly as the guys pounded him on the back with welcome.

"Mate, place as' been missin' ye good."

"So I see," Roux exclaimed as he fell from Fiona's arms into Conner's, then finally Danny's. "I missed you something crazy, brother."

"I'll drink t' that."

"Oh, I bet ye will." Roux looked about the pub for a moment, smiling the entire time. The building was as old as the corner of the city itself, the character of which made it the finest example of Irish folklore and soul in the entirety of France. "Proud t' see you kept up with the place. Paris would be lost without it."

"Paris is lost anyways. Here," he filled an iced glass from around the bar and shoved it towards him with a longing sort of grin. "Ave' a Guinness and tell us all 'bout the journey. Make us an envious lot, as usual."

Fiona sat beside Roux on one of the tired stools, her green eyes wide with anticipation of the tales, the ones that he'd always indulged her in late at night when everyone else slept off their drink.

"Tell us quickly then. You know how I live for this," she smirked with a healthy gulp of her beer.

For a good hour or two into the late afternoon, he told them all about it. He started with the day after he'd first left Paris for Luscany, and then fell into the details of Vianne and Anouk and the chocolate shop. And while Connor drooled over the images being conjured up, Roux moved on to his time spent in Italy on the coast, painting and seducing a married, American journalist named Roxanne. Fiona shook her head at this with a tiny smirk, touched the leg of his jeans with a teasing caress, as Danny cheered him for the effort lost anyway. He only spent a few minutes explaining his time at home, the place they all truly considered home at one point or another, but it was long enough for them to get a well enough of idea of the love he'd found in a red head on the greenest of all bays. When the short tales of Lara were finished though and he had returned full circle to his journey back to Paris, the skies outside were darkening to a rich blue and the pub was in need of a decent sweep before the regular crowd arrived.

Connor and Danny took off to set up shop with equally forceful pats on Roux's back, welcoming him back to their gypsy, hole in the wall gang all the more. And when he turned to the bar again, he knew exactly what was waiting on him.

"Come on," Fiona smiled through the veil of ruby curls that framed her freckled face as she tugged at his shirt. "I'll help get ye settled in. Your room's been waiting on you, Roux."

"_Ah_…" he sighed with a seduced bite of his lower lip, "Good t' be back."

He let her lead him through the pub, up the narrow wooden steps to the apartment above, and into the darkness of the room he knew she was more or less using as an excuse for the kind of 'settling in' that she usually provided him with. He wouldn't be unpacking a bag, or napping off his travelling, or cleaning his tired face. He was in for an altogether different sort of welcoming feast, something he loved much more than a good tale or beer.

As he stood before her, watching her red nails loosen each button of his shirt, he tried to think of only Fiona, only her cabernet lips and clover eyes. But while he gave her his smiles and his passionate turn through the old sheets of the squeaking bed, he was really only thinking of one thing.

"_I didn't mean to try and kill you,"_she had said so apologetically, with those wide brown eyes, that it rather hurt. And all he could think was, '_I'd likely die one happy wreck o' a man in those honey sweet, Yankee arms._'


	3. Mr Curiosity

**Chapter 2: Mr. Curiosity **

Days passed, and without work or a place to indulge her musical gift for an income, the days passed by slowly and in simple agony for Isabelle. She spent little time in her room, and the majority of the days' long hours walking up and down every block within five miles of the hotel, searching out clubs, bars, and pubs for a stage that would be open for her, somewhere she could go to make a living with her guitar. The problem wasn't her voice or the fact that she was an American in Paris, in fact that widened eyes and gained enough smiles for any one girl to be fond of. The problem was that east Paris was overflowing with one woman acts no different from hers. Every other girl under the age of thirty on this side of the city dreamed of making it big, or at least making it long enough to pay rent.

"You're sure you don't have any openings, at all?"

The gruff man behind the counter of _La Barre Jaune_, in the back alleyway of a street near the Opera house, shook his head regrettably. He left her with a promise to call the hotel where she was staying if he found he did have a performance opening or even a need for a waitress sometime soon. Isabelle thanked him, finished her beer and took off for another street, another prospect.

It didn't take long and the walk was a brisk one from across the square of Champs-Elysees. There was music pouring out of the darkly painted and dimly lit pub when she shuffled around the corner in her well worn boots and white cotton dress. A breeze blew through her messy honey locks, resting them on her bared shoulders just as she tugged on the handle of O'Sullivans, a charming sort of Irish watering hole. The air inside was smoke filled and smelled of dried hops and barley. The walls were painted a commanding green and black. The floors were wooden and thoroughly scratched from the legs of chairs and the obvious popularity that had yet to arrive in the early Tuesday evening. All of it covered Isabelle in a strange sort of comfort, as if she were coming home, but to no home she'd ever known before.

"Are ye drinking or drowning, lassie?"

Her eyes turned from the walls of aged photographs and Celtic heirlooms to the bar, where a tall, crimson haired man stood with a flashing grin, wiping it down.

"Actually," she began as she stepped towards him, her arms resting on the back of a barstool. "I'm new to the city. I'm a singer." His black eyes followed her with brightened approval as she concluded. "I'm looking for a somewhere to play. Do you need anyone?"

He sighed in genuine regret, "Fraid' not, lovely. We 'ave a house band, just me and few o' me buddies."

"Oh, I see." Isabelle smiled and pushed her hair behind her ear as she turned for the door again, "Thank you, all the same."

Her hand was on the doorknob when the sound of a distressing voice rose above the cackling of a small crowd in the corner of the pub. It wasn't the same voice as the man from behind the bar, but a similar Gaelic inflection remained, one flavored by a few other cultures. She could sense this even before she turned.

"Wait just a minute, Miss."

She did, and as her boots shifted back and her eyes lifted from the tired drape of her golden hair, Isabelle felt certain that somewhere in the world, there was a higher power, one capable of path crossing and star matching. For how could there not be, when he stood there, the man with the strong Irish arms to match his shy oceanic voice, his coal doused eyes splintering her into a million pieces with one smiling glance.

"You're the girl from th' hotel yesterday, am I right?"

Isabelle gulped with a nod.

"Tried t' kill me with that guitar o' yours."

"I did apologize for it."

"Aye," he laughed with a savoring final drag of his cigarette as he crushed the butt into an ashtray on a nearby table, walking closer to her. "It must be some hell o' an instrument though. It's the only thing t' ever force me straight off me boots."

She smiled at this and shook her head, still apologetic, the way Roux found her most fascinating. "I'm sure Dylan is equally as sorry for the pain he caused you."

"Dylan? Ye named it?"

"Of course," she replied as though it were an act of second nature.

"You're American. Must be named for ole' Bob then."

"Wrong. Dylan was my grandfather's name. He's the one who taught me how to play."

Roux felt his heart bubble over with something comfortable in her response, something that took him back to his own childhood, his own grandfather in Limerick. He smiled and leaned near the doorway, attempting to put an ease to her leaving, trying just to hold onto her this time.

"So, grandfather's name was Dylan. Wot' on earth can yours be?"

A teasing grin crossed her face as Isabelle tried to move through the door and was stopped by his eyes alone. "What use is my name to you?"

"I need a pretty name for me new five string, o' course."

She laughed and leaned on the opposite side of the doorway, eyeing him carefully, "Touché."

"On guard, _Miss_…?"

"Taylor. Isabelle Taylor."

Somewhere lost in her eyes and the scent of her body surrounding him, Roux whispered a mere, "_Perfect_," and watched as her face lit up with humor. He caught himself from falling into her again, this time at his own fault of sensual imbalance. "Isabelle. Mind if I call you Izzie?"

"Why would you do that?"

"Well, because there's nothing formal 'bout this place. An' you need a place t' sing don't you?"

"Yes, but I--"

"But ye wot'? Weren't expecting t' have to share a stage?"

Isabelle inhaled deeply and turned her face through the pub towards the stage, where twinkling lights and antique Irish beer signs served as decoration enough. Then when she felt the warm breath of the man coming ever closer to her in the doorway, she turned back and stared up at him nervously.

"I'm not sharing a stage with _you_. I'm sorry, but I sing alone."

Roux grinned in complete fascination at the sound of her voice and the light in her eyes.

"Tell me something, Izzie." He gained her full attention with the name alone, "Don't ye need the money t' hold onto this free-wheeling little adventure o' yours through Paris? Don't you need the job? A place t' sing for a few Euros a night?"

"Yes," was her clear cut response as she watched both of his hands settle on the wall beside her head, his face coming ever nearer to hers in the dark corner. "Then why not give it a shot with me? Why not take a chance, lassie? I promise I can swing a rather pretty tune."

The radiance on his peppered tongue of hidden journey's and ventures was what made her fall even deeper into his gaze and his breath and his closeness without so much as a single touch. She stared up at Roux with widened eyes, eyes that were opened for the first time in far too long. She saw no more of the small town, southern girl she once was when she noticed her reflection in his blackened eyes. She didn't see Isabelle Taylor, the knobby kneed girl with muddy ankles and a troublesome curiosity. And what gave her the most hope of all, was that she saw no trace of Dirk or the potential for further agony or heartbreak in his eyes. That was what decided her mind in the matter.

"Fine, I'll give it a shot." She whispered low with a tight smirk up at him, "If you'll at least just tell me your name."

Roux's smile brightened in an instant as he stood tall, providing her with breathing room again. There was something so simply intriguing about her, something that no European woman had ever once touched upon in his travels. She was unpretentious, but classic at the same time. She could be funny without trying and serious when she didn't seem to want to be. And the way her eyes lit up with the slightest of awkwardness or nervousness, made him want to throw his arms around her and never let go. Isabelle had stolen his entire functioning process with only minutes of her acquaintance into his world.

"Name's Roux," he finally replied with a soft hand to shake. She did, steadily, as though she had been taught by a long line of tough American men, men she named guitars after, and most likely trucks and boots and anything else worthy of her simplistic lifestyle. "An' I'm thinking you should bring this virtuoso Dylan o' yours in for a little test run t'night."

"A test run?"

"Yeah, you know," he teased with a single wink. "T' see how well we _harmonize_ together."

Of all the things she wanted to say to that, of all the things she wanted to do at the very mention of it, Isabelle held back with numb tongue and a trembling hand on the cool iron doorknob. She was willing to give the prospect of a duet a chance. She was willing to give O'Sullivans a chance. She only hoped it wasn't so completely obvious that she wanted nothing more than to give Roux his fair chance just the same.


	4. Something

**Chapter 3: Something**

It was almost eight o'clock by the time Isabelle had returned to the hotel, showered and changed into something more suitable for an evening in a pub. She threw on a knee length yellow dress, with lace in all the right places and cuts in all the better places. She teased her golden tresses for almost an hour before brushing through them and shaking her way to the door of the room. Her boots were returned to her feet for the kind of luck she suspected she would need, and then she grabbed her old leather guitar case and a cigarette for the walk. It wasn't a habit for her. It was what Dirk had always called an 'extra hobby', a sport that came and went as quickly as her taste for art, or clothes, or men in most cases.

One thing was for certain though. Her interest in Irish musicians would never go out of style.

She tore down the purple streets with her heartstrings tugged in two very different directions: towards the pub, towards her new corner gig, and the other, was west towards the hotel she had come from, to safety and security and her solo career. Isabelle wasn't sure whether to trust another struggling performer like her, especially one so ruggedly handsome and good at coercion in public doorways. She wasn't sure what would happen when she stepped inside the place, or when she played for him or the crowd. But there was no point in continuing the struggle to find work or a place to play at all. At the very least, if all else failed majorly, she was getting that small opportunity thanks to Roux.

O'Sullivans was packed from the steps to the doorway and all the way to the back of the pub near the stage front when she finally arrived. Artists and poets were locked into a frenzy of conversation, same as businessmen and traders closer to the bar. She sneaked between bodies with her guitar case and nearly convinced herself she was a lost cause to the effort, when she heard a voice above the rest, that same genuine comfort of the voice luring her all the more closer.

"Izzie, over here…"

She found a firm stance at the left corner of the stage near the glinting drum stands and caught Roux's eyes from the opposite side, where he sat tuning his guitar with a warm smile.

"Come on up, love."

Isabelle stumbled to the stage with her case and took the chair that he offered her, waiting until he returned with another to remove her guitar and rest it on her knees. Roux had to remind himself just to breathe as he sat down facing her, his pants barely brushing the softness of her knees where her black dress was hiked. He noticed that she wore the same old boots for a third time since he'd known her, and began to wonder to himself just how special they were and whether the meaning behind them was as important to her as the meaning of his few possessions were to him. He wondered if the boots had names too, and chuckled under his breath at the thought as she fell into a light strum with him.

"Aren't these people here to listen to music?"

Roux lifted his gaze to catch her solid brown orbs with a smile. "They talk while we mess 'round with picking songs. Th' show doesn't start until they're all good an' drunk anyway."

Isabelle was only half surprised by the response and laughed.

"Got any ideas then?"

"Ideas for…?"

"Songs, Izzie. _Songs_…"

The tease in his voice made her blush as she stroked lightly at the chords of her guitar, thinking.

"I don't know. I can cover just about anything."

"Anything American, ye mean?"

"Well," she sighed nervously before snapping back, "I am an American, Roux. We generally take pride in our hillbilly music."

A nod and a soft, "touché" from him was all she needed to hear to know she was somehow in his good graces already. And she had a million different songs to throw his way, all of them her favorites and indispensible to the world of music, ones she was sure he would know. The only problem with voicing the input was the interruption of an unexpected, red-headed violinist. She wrapped her arms around Roux's neck as his strumming faded in response to her whispering on his ear. Isabelle tried not to watch the scene. She tried to pretend as though she was non-existent to the atmosphere, but when the woman stood up with a mere hand on Roux's shoulder, the introductions she had dreaded began.

"Fiona, this is th' girl I told ye bout. Isabelle."

She gave a reflective nod and reached her hand out to shake Isabelle's.

"It's nice to meet you, Fiona."

"You're American, huh?"

"Yes."

"Well," she replied with a tasteless sort of tone. "Roux's company is a good place for ye t' start. He'll be able t' teach you a thing or two up 'ere."

"Oh, actually I--"

Before Isabelle could explain the truth of the matter and her position, before she could explain that she had been taught to play guitar on the same five strings as Willie Nelson and Tom Petty at one point in her life, before she could even summon the right courage to tell Fiona that Roux had ruined her chances at a solo act to throw her into their Celtic jam session, she stormed away from them with a flip of her wild red mane and began to greet her fans, the one she proved _weren't_ Isabelle's with every sinister glare of her green eyes from the crowd. Roux saw all of this, and with a shameful pound in his heart and a guilty pang in his stomach, he reached out to rest his hand gently over Isabelle's on the strings of her guitar, refocusing her attention.

"Fiona likes t' remind outsiders o' themselves. Don't worry 'bout her."

"She doesn't like Americans."

"No," he shook his head regrettably at her. "She just doesn't like American _girls_ that play guitar better than her."

"But you haven't even heard me--"

Cutting her off with a teasing smirk, he finished. "…Among other things."

"Oh." She shied away from his hinting eyes to continue tuning her guitar at the note. But Roux wasn't about to let her off the hook from his conversational skills, and she should have known better.

"So, any ideas for songs…?"

Her eyes turned up and with his full attention gained again, she fell into a long list of all her favorites, all the best songs for duets, and was surprised to find that the majority of the ones she named were ones that he both equally adored and could spin out with no trouble. They practiced for almost an hour together, laughing over nothing in particular but their own misstep in chords, drinking from iced glasses of Guinness, sharing a handful of cigarettes, and shocking one another by the level of skill that they matched so perfectly. They were like one in the same, two sets of hands operating one beat. Isabelle no longer regretted the idea of performing alongside Roux, or giving up her solo act for a harmonizing twosome. She herself couldn't have come up with a more beautiful sound that what they seemed to concoct through teasing and smoking and playful strumming.

For almost two hours afterward, Fiona and Danny and Connor played a full set of their own songs, ones that Roux had helped to write once upon a time. They tossed in old Celtic classics, a French ballad or two, and by way of what Roux assumed had been Fiona's request they re-routed their performance from the usual addition of American rock prose. Isabelle thankfully, didn't know the truth either way.

Twenty songs and a short encore later, as the band worked through the cheering and greetings of the filled pub of admirers, Roux helped Isabelle get situated on stage with a microphone and glass of water. He noticed her hands trembling against her guitar and with a wistful sort of grin, leaned in and kissed her softly on the cheek, as if to imply good luck without the words to speak it. She accepted with a smile as she watched him find a comfortable balance at the stand beside her and after a minute or so, the crowd quieted down and lingered together with intent ears. The majority of them were there to witness Roux's triumphant return to Paris, the wide rumor the streets had been filled with since the week before. None of them knew Isabelle, and she suspected that if any of them were like Fiona, they wouldn't care less if she could sing or play or do circus tricks. She wasn't the reason behind their presence.

When she heard a cough to gain her attention though, she noticed the sound of Connor drumming behind her and the tune radiating from Roux's old Gibson. It was haunting in the midst of the complete silence that fell over the pub, almost as if some powerful spirit were straining for life inside of it. That, mixed with the sound of his voice as he mumbled a greeting into the microphone, were all she needed to refocus on the present and begin to draw a similar beat from her own ghostly instrument.

"Good t' see you all tonight. Thanks for coming out. We've got a new addition t' the O'Sullivan family with us this evening though. Ye might 'ave noticed her up here, shaking knees an' all." There was a pattering laughter throughout the pub as all eyes turned directly to Isabelle under the twinkling lights. "I'd like for you all t' give a fair welcome to our little tourist 'ere from the States. Tennessee's own, Miss Isabelle Taylor."

She gulped when the rowdy applause came, and especially at the unexpected force of it, the power in their warming welcome. There were whistles for her as she stepped aside from the microphone stand and gave a smiling curtsy.

"Thank you," she whispered in response, and then turned her eyes directly down at Fiona in the front row. "I'm_ very_ happy to be here." And just as the fire in the red-head's glare intensified, she was brought back to reality and the truth of her guitar when Roux announced the song, the one she'd first chosen, and the one that he'd sworn was his favorite among the thousands of others she listed.

"We'll start with an ole' Beatles song that darling Izzie as' chosen for us t'night. If any of you drunken sots know the words, feel free t' join us."

Isabelle laughed quietly as he turned and winked to her, before both of them fell so equally hard into the lyrics, their eyes pinned to one another's so dangerously, that she swore she felt something deeper, something truer coming from his lips, the same way he felt something richer sliding from hers.

"_All you need is love_…"

She took the haunting words with admiration as they fell from his silver lined tongue and Isabelle returned with the same passion, "All you need is love,_ love_. Love is all you need."

* * *

Song: **ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE** By: _The Beatles_


	5. Here Comes the Sun

**Chapter 4: Here Comes the Sun**

"'Bout three hundred from th' bar tonight." Danny mumbled as he shuffled with bills and coins across the counter of the bar. When he was done tossing it all into separate piles, he handed one to Isabelle with a tired smile. "That's fifty for you, Americana."

Her eyes went wide in surprise. "But I wasn't even working behind the bar."

"No, but your th' reason that lot at the foot o' the stage ordered three extra rounds," he mused with a teasing wink as he pushed the money into her hand, "Your share from the bar."

"And this…" Roux interrupted as he slid down onto the stool beside her, swiping Euros together in counting. When he was done, he held out another stack to Isabelle with a puff of his cigarette overhead, "Is your share from th' stage, Doll."

"What?"

Danny laughed at her doubly shocked expression as Roux leaned closer with a whisper, "One-ten. Not a bad first gig."

"I can't. This isn't even—I mean it was just a test run. _Remember_?"

"Test run?" Connor shouted from the stage as he packed away his guitar. "Ye leaving our little family so soon, Blondie?"

Isabelle's worried pout changed to a smile as she shook her head in his direction, then turned her eyes up to Roux's as he forced the money more confidently into the palm of her hand, same as Danny had.

"You and Roux are th' new midnight filler, if ye want the job Isabelle?"

She glanced toward Danny again behind the bar, thankful for his change of heart in hiring her, and even more thankful for Roux, who had initiated the entire audition of sorts.

"I would love the job."

"Good," he shouted with a pound of his fist on the bar as he slid away toward the back stairwell. "I'm going t' get some sleep, lads. Don't let the sun burn 'oles in your arses." And after he'd disappeared upstairs, and Connor had tumbled out into the early morning darkness with his black haired conquest under his arm, Roux turned back to Isabelle as she was standing from the bar and reaching for her guitar.

"Need some help then?"

"No," she shook her messy curls with an exhausted grin. "I'll be alright. It's just a few blocks."

"A dangerous few blocks…"

"And what are you suggesting?"

"Figure ye could use th' protection, s'all." The teasing glow in his eyes, matched with the corner smirk on his lips, brought her heart racing all over again. She wavered between the bar and the doorway, the guitar case practically slipping from her tired fingers as she attempted to leave. Something in the way he stared though, something in the way he hovered over her exit made her wonder about his obvious intentions. The answer came so much sooner that it frightened her a little.

"Izzie," he whispered as she turned once more near the door, eyes locked upward into his. "Are ye hungry by any chance?"

"Hungry? It's almost four in the morning, Roux."

"Best time t' eat, when the city's asleep."

"Is it?"

He nodded with a bite of his lower lip as he held the door open for her and then followed her out. She stood on the corner with her guitar and a sleepless grin that shown under the single streetlamp, and he felt every bit of himself crushed into oblivion. The way her deep southern skin, a bronzed honey, sparkled in the early morning light, the way her eyes were half closed and dazed from too much alcohol and yet still not enough. She was mesmerizing on too many levels to count.

"Let me take ye t' this place I know, on the river. You could use some coffee."

She yawned and swayed with a curious smile before she let herself give in to the offer. "Coffee does sound _really_ good."

In utter satisfaction, he walked towards her and took the heavy guitar case into his own hand, then reached low to tangle his free hand with hers, pulling her down the hazy sapphire streets that led to the Seine waterway. They passed by dozens of cafes, closed vendors, shoe stores, antique and fabric sellers alike. They paused to gawk at chocolates in a window, cakes in another and refurbished guitars in yet another. Isabelle's hand never left Roux's, and in all honesty, she noticed his grip tighten every so often when she said something in particular, or laughed a certain way, or walked closer to him on the street.

The small café he bragged about was settled at the bend of the river facing the Eiffel opposite the Louvre. She tried not to admire the romanticism of it, and instead focused on the historic pleasantness of the quiet roads and dusty purple that the sky was turning as they fell down into iron woven chairs, overlooking what seemed like the edge of the universe. Isabelle hardly had time to admire much of it though, before a waitress streamlined to their table from inside the café, and began falling all over Roux. She wondered if this was the style of return he was granted every time he came back to Paris, and back into the presence of so many beautiful women.

"Amelie, c'est mon nouvel ami Isabelle."

The girl with the short auburn bob and sparkling blue eyes reached across the small table with a smile and hand to shake. "Bonjour, Isabelle. Enchantée."

"Bonjour," she returned with an equally friendly grin, before relaxing back into her chair and listening to Roux and the young waitress carry on a deeply confusing conversation in French. It was harmonious in a way though, romantic to be sure, and it made Isabelle feel somehow free and adventurous just hearing them carry on with ease.

"Pouvez vous nous apporter deux tasses de café, l'amour?"

"Oui et ce d'autre?"

There was a brief pause in the passing of words when Isabelle felt something warm cover her hand on the table, another hand, Roux's gentle touch. She glanced toward his curious face as he asked her, "Coffee and something t' eat too, Izzie?"

"Oh, um…" she attempted to look over the menu. But without pictures, the words threw her for a far loop and she heard Roux snicker before he responded for her to the waitress.

"Les deux pomme chausson. Qui devrait le faire, charmant."

"Bein entendu," she giggled as she spun on her heels and disappeared into the café again, leaving Roux and Isabelle alone once more on the small street. Only the passing of an elderly man with his small dog in the grey light of pre dawn entertained them in silence, before finally it was broken by his voice beating hers to the punch.

"Nice view, eh?"

She bit her lip to keep from giggling the same as the swooning waitress and turned in her chair toward him again.

"It's the most beautiful place, _ever_."

Roux chuckled lowly and scooted his chair closer to hers. He wrapped his arm around the back of it as his breath warmed her neck, his nose taken away by the intoxication of her skin's honey aroma. "I've seen quite a few places, ye know. Been halfway round th' world an' back. Paris is nice, but you haven't seen India, darlin'. You haven't seen South America, or Mali, or Japan."

"And you have, Roux?"

He nodded with a playful smile. "I've sailed fore'er, back an' forth, here and there an' all over the damned place."

"You're lucky. I wish I could do that."

"You can."

"No," she shook her head as she noticed the waitress returning with their coffee and pastries. "It took me twenty-three years just to escape Tennessee. I'm lucky to even be here now."

Amelie passed around the cups and plates and silverware for them, with jellies and spreads covering the table. Isabelle smiled gratefully at her and used what little French she knew, "Merci." The waitress grinned approvingly, patted Roux on the back with the same look, and then left them again. He was stunned by Isabelle's last words, the sheer weakness in them, as though she'd used every bit of strength in her just to leave home, and he found himself all too curious as he watched her stir sugar into her coffee and spread grape jelly onto her apple croissant.

"Wot' made ye finally decide t' leave the States?"

She bit into the pastry with an ignorant smile and said, "This is really good." Roux could plainly see she was avoiding the question and he hated that. He hated the look that crept across her face in his interest to her situation. It was fear.

"Izzie?"

Her tone became instantly annoyed, as though she wanted the conversation to change. "What?"

"Why did ye leave home?"

"Does it really matter that much?"

Roux nodded as he noticed a small dollop of violet jelly sticking to the corner of her mouth. With his thumb, he swiped it away and licked it off, making her eyes grow nervous as his curiosity continued to flourish.

"It matters because I want t' know."

"Why? So you can feel sorry for me?"

He stared at her, giving his response to her hesitance, and when she felt plenty crumpled by his eyes, Isabelle wiped her hands clean on her napkin and then proceeded to twist her long blonde tresses away to reveal the nape of her neck to Roux in the light of the growing day. His chest heaved at the sight, his heart beat furiously and his breathing staggered as he reached his hand out to lightly brush over the fading bruise with the tips of his fingers. A rush ran the length of her spine at the touch, her breathing hitched with the warmth, and before Isabelle could stop herself from falling into him, she felt his fingertips replaced by the moist softness of his lips as he kissed the blackened blue of her neck. It was brief in reality, but felt like an eternity before he moved away and drew her golden locks down from her hand to cover the wound again, to humble her personally.

"_Look_," he whispered against her ear, his nose pressed into her sweet smelling hair as his eyes appealed to the orange brightness drifting over the distant roof of the museum. "Here comes th' sun, love."

The meaning and the beauty of the moment was in no way lost to her perceptiveness.


	6. Sentimental Silence

**Chapter 5: Sentimental Silence**

After Roux had kindly walked her ten blocks further east from O'Sullivans to the hotel where she was staying, Isabelle had thanked him, hugged him for the trouble and the unnecessary gesture of paying for her breakfast. Then she had turned inside, run upstairs and fallen face first into the creaky old mattress of her bed. She stayed there for most of the day too, with mere shifts in the sheets or hums of the songs that flowed out of the small bedside radio. She thought of a million and one things, of her new 'regular' gig at the pub, of the uncanny handful of French cash she'd made in the process of gaining that job, and most of all, she dreamed on the coattails of images she conjured of Roux's face, of his fingertips and mouth on her skin, of the taste that his hand-rolled cigarette smoke left on her tongue.

Isabelle wanted to spend the day with him, walking the river, jumping in and out of shops she could now afford, tasting all kinds of French delicacies and bringing herself closer to edge of existence with him, testing the waters further than she'd been sure she first wished to. She wanted to throw what little inhibitions she had left to the cool September breeze and fall into him, completely.

But she hadn't and she knew it was probably the smartest decision for the time being. He was far too tempting, too charming, and too perfect for her to ruin it on a fantastical whim. He was her business partner now, the other half of her money-making duet, and in many ways he was her founder, the man who had discovered her shining talent and given it a stage to land on. She owed him so much more than a one night stand, or a day of romancing through Paris could provide. She owed Roux a much larger part of who she was; the deeper part of her that no one in this place was aware of, the place where all the secrets had been shoved and covered up with her innocent American glow.

When the sunset finally rolled around and covered her room in a rich pink, Isabelle slid out of the bed and took a shower to wash away all of her thoughts. She stood under the water convinced that her second night singing with Roux would be professionally based. She promised herself that she wouldn't fall into him the same way, or at least so easily unguarded. But in her heart, as she stood zipping up her black peasant dress in front of the mirror and fooling with her untamable hair, she knew that none of those promises were going to come into play once she saw him, once he touched her again or kissed her on the cheek before playing, or stared longingly at her with the final verse of a love song. In those cases, it would all be forgotten.

Because of this, she took her time walking to the pub, if only to postpone the inevitable. When she got there a crowd had again already formed, but this time, instead of her having to shove her way through them, she was practically carried to the stage on a cloud of greetings and praise and cheering excitement.

"Can't wait t' hear you, Izzie!"

"You were so great last night, Isabelle. You and Roux play so perfectly together."

"Bonne chance, Isabelle. Nous avons adore vous!"

With waves and polite kisses on her cheek to last a lifetime or more, she eventually stepped onto the stage where Connor was setting up the amps and Danny worked with the drums. They both smiled and greeted her with high fives as she sat down and pulled her guitar out. Her eyes covered the entirety of the pub, but Roux was nowhere to be seen. And by little surprise to her, neither was Fiona.

So Isabelle found her focus and tuned her guitar as she strung out the first two acoustic verses of _Wild Horses, _noticing how focusing members of the growing audience hummed along or tapped their feet to her whispered practice. She thought of her grandfather as she played, lost in a distant place that she was sure no one surrounding her could ever understand. Her dusty blonde hair fell into her face as she drew her entire attention to the way her red fingernails danced between the strings of the instrument. She let herself get carried away for a long time, falling out of the atmosphere for a single taste of home, one she was glad still existed in some preternatural corner of her mind.

She was so focused in fact, that she never noticed the man who had slipped from the shadows of the back stairwell and away from Fiona's forced company, to take a seat just behind her, lightly strumming along to the beat she had already generated. Roux studied her brashness in melody, fascinated by the unaccompanied side of Isabelle, the solo side that she revealed to him unknowingly. It was as beautiful as every other part of her.

As she concluded playing, he leaned forward to press his nose into her hair, his lips hovering over her ear with a small kiss that made her instantly flinch and turn to him. Roux smiled at her expression and as she stared, rising from her chair with the guitar, he followed teasingly, never saying a word.

"You're late for rehearsal," she quipped in expectance of a return jab. But it never came. He only stared longingly down at her as she settled her guitar into a stand. Finally she asked, "What's wrong?"

Roux grinned and moved his hand to this throat, gesturing the impossibility of speech with a shake of his head. Isabelle tried to catch on to what he was motioning at, but was too lost in his eyes and his scent and his warmth to understand. She too shook her head in confusion. He rolled his eyes and tugged at her hand, leading her through the crowd to the bar, then grabbed a napkin labeled **O'Sullivans Est. 1904**, and pulled a pen from his back pocket to write.

"Why are you writing on that? Roux, what's wrong with you?" Isabelle nudged his shoulder as he revealed the napkin's words to her. She read them quietly aloud:

**I lost my voice singing with you last night. Sorry. It's been a while.**

Her eyes reacted to the statement as she looked up to see his honest nod and grin. "What are you talking about? I thought you sang all the time?"

An interruption by Danny from over the bar, explained it better. "He used t' sing all the time, lassie. But not since e' first left ole' Paris—he's strictly guitars and paintbrushes, this one."

Roux gave a testing glare at the jaunting until Isabelle turned her attention back to him. "So," she began as he wrote furiously on a second and third napkin. "You're not going to be able to sing with me then?" Before he could conclude writing, her tone became a sneaky sort of whisper as she said, "I'm going to have to sing _all by myself_ tonight…?"

His eyes immediately turned from the napkin with a knowing glow of what she was suggesting for her herself, and upon seeing the taunt in her brown eyes, he could merely shake his head.

"I'm going to be a solo act this evening." He threw a surrendering gesture with his hand in defeat and slumped to the stool beside where she stood. Isabelle giggled under her breath and leaned into him in mock disappointment, putting on her best apologetic pout with her chin resting on his broad shoulder. Danny laughed as she continued to tease his dear blood brother, "I'm so sorry, Roux. I guess you'll just have to spin me one of those 'pretty little tunes' of yours instead, huh?"

His eyes were ill amused but his heart was plenty humored, plenty smitten with her mockery.

"I think I know _exactly_ what song I want to start with too. Can you play that piano up there?"

Roux smirked with a nod and scratched something on the napkin as she turned her attention to the stage where Connor and Fiona fell wildly into their instrumentals. With a return nudge, he pushed the last napkin towards her on the bar with a sincere grin. Isabelle read the words without voicing them. She cherished them like a secret that she only ever wanted to know for herself.

**You look beautiful tonight, me Izzie.**

And as if the claiming of her as his and the compliment to match weren't enough, he had scrawled a heart onto the napkin as well, replacing the point of the 'I' in her name. She felt her body tingle in a flurry as the music of the pub lifted spirits all around her. She spun on the stool to face him directly, staring with such force and focus into his eyes, that she swore she saw them smile right back at her. The moment was the purest she'd ever spent, anywhere and with anyone in her life. He was the purest thing she'd ever known.

For almost an hour, she let herself become trapped in his web of nothingness really. He didn't say a word, because he couldn't. But every time he let his hand rest on her leg or he shifted his weight around to wrap an arm across the back of her chair, or every time he leaned towards her with a teasing wink or smile, she felt her heart skip a beat that the music of Fiona's violin never missed. She felt herself falling hard and fast and unpredictably, and she was crushed to admit that she loved the process of tripping again.

When the music quieted to a lull and then a fade, Roux rubbed her back as a signal for her to move with him to the stage. Connor announced the both of them, and while everyone cheering and clapping for them was expecting a duel performance like the night prior, Roux moved clearly away from the microphone and took a seat at the piano instead. Isabelle stepped up to hers though, with a nervous sort of shake in her knees that made the toes of her old boots thump together. Roux watched this and smiled as he lightly hit certain keys, wondering just what the song was going to be. Before he could wonder too long, Isabelle turned and placed something down in front of him on the piano, a napkin with a helpful hint.

**La Vie en Rose**

A proud beam spread across his face as he glanced toward her with an approving nod. Isabelle took the response and turned around for the microphone once more as the crowd's pitch died down. They sat with wide eyes and even wider ears as she took the honor of thanking them for coming, and for their applause.

"It's only my second night here, but you've all made me feel so at home. Thank you for that." Whistles from the back of the pub made her laugh as she continued in a regretful tone. "Unfortunately," she paused to give one small pout to Roux behind her and then concluded. "I'm afraid it's going to be just me singing for you tonight. Our _dear Roux_ seems to have misjudged his ability to hold a key in C minor for more than three nights running."

The crowd sighed with laughter and a mock, 'Aw' as Connor drummed a comedic praise on the symbols for her. Roux stood up from the piano, remorsefully bowed and blew a kiss before sitting down again. And despite it all, the regulars and the drunken visitors gave her the support she needed with their full attention as Roux began to dabble on the keys of the piano, and Isabelle, began to resonate a spirit with the lyrics pouring from her lips.

**Hold me close and hold me fast**

**The magic spell you cast…**

**This is La Vie En Rose.**

It was a slow tempo, a putter of words and emotions that came from deep in the trenches of her heart when he played for her from out of sight. The enchantment of his fingers stroking a blind tune for her alone to follow with the truth of the sentiment behind it was like a dream. And only here, in a small Irish pub in the middle of Paris, could the song mean what it truly did, for either of them. Everything Isabelle felt from center stage and facing the entranced mob, Roux felt doubly just watching the way she swayed with the microphone as if it were a dancing lover.

**When you kiss me, heaven sighs. **

**And though I close my eyes…**

**I see La Vie En Rose.**

**When you press me to your heart,**

**I'm in a world apart. **

**A world where roses bloom…**

**And when you speak, angels sing from above…**

**Every day words seem to—turn into love songs…**

Only one thing crossed his mind with much intention as he watched her and listened to her. One thing rose above the beauty and the sensuality and the truth lingering on her spell-binding tongue. And that alone, was that he knew he had to have her for all those perfectly blended reasons. He had to make Isabelle only his, if nothing else in this world could be done for him again. It had to be that lastly.

The final verse churned through the air on a short breathed whim while he caressed the piano keys for all their worth. She whispered the words into the microphone as if it were a secret for only him, and it made Roux listen twice as closely when she said—

**Give your heart and soul to me. **

**And life will always be…**

He rose from the stool at the piano as the applause rose throughout the pub. Isabelle wavered thankfully at her microphone, but before she could reach for her guitar in the stand and begin another song, Roux snuck up behind her with his fingers tugging at the loose fabric of her dress. A single whisper in between her golden spindles, upon the cusp of her lone energy, made his official mark in her heart.

"You're my, _La Vie En Rose_…"

* * *

Song: **LA VIE EN ROSE** By: _Edith Piaf/Louis Armstrong_


	7. Lips Like Sugar

**Chapter 6: Lips Like Sugar**

"You lied to me," she giggled as she walked backwards down the dark and empty riverfront, her guitar strapped to her back without the case and swaying at every skipping bounce she made on the wet cobblestone. "I can't believe you faked it. You are good at it, though. I'll give you that."

Roux was mesmerized by her liveliness of pace, the way she moved after having sung alone for a packed house of new admirers. She looked as though she was on top of the world, tugging him along with her for the ride, and he couldn't help but to laugh at her tipsy twists and spins in the moonlight.

"Why did you do it?" Isabelle finally asked as she stopped dead center in the street, her hands pressing into his steady chest. "Why did you pretend you couldn't sing with me? Did you not like it?"

He shook his head furiously and took her hands in his. "No. I loved singing with ye."

"Then _why_…?"

Her warm hops breath on his nose was suffocating in the best of ways.

"I wanted t' see you like this."

"Like what? Drunk? You didn't have to act speechless for that, you know."

Roux brushed a few loose strands of her unruly blonde hair away with her bubbly giggles.

"The only thing you're drunk on love, is life. An' I adore it." Isabelle paused against him, drowning in his eyes as he spoke to her. "I wanted t' see the girl that swore she only sings _alone_."

She gulped on air and seduction alone. "Do you see her now?"

"Aye."

"And…?"

He wrapped his arms around her and pressed her body as closely to his as was physically possible. Her hair blew in the late night breeze, her eyes twinkled under the glow of a nearby streetlamp, and every bit of her was as soft as he'd dreamed up.

"I think she's th' most fascinating creature t' have ever come into me world." Isabelle smiled longingly as Roux's mouth came within a breath's inch of hers. "But I think that whatever happened t' this girl to make 'er fall into a bad situation," his fingers traced over the nape of her neck, under her silky hair, making her entire body tremble in his arms. "Whatever the world did t' this girl before now, needs t' be forgotten."

There were a million and one things she wanted to say to that. But in hesitation and fear, Isabelle slowly found herself stepping back from Roux's arms. She stared up at him nervously before spinning on the heels of her boots, her guitar matching her stride as she hurdled down the street for the hotel.

"Izzie, where ye going?"

No response came, and because of it, Roux found himself jogging to catch up to her.

"Isabelle, stop."

Surprisingly to both of them, she did. She stopped dead in her tracks as he matched her, his boots coming to land on the wet street right next to hers. Isabelle was slumped with her arms crossed as he turned her to face him and his hands holding her cheeks were what brought her eyes up to his, revealing fresh tears. He brushed them away one by one onto the pads of his thumbs and sighed.

"I'm just going t' chase you all night if ye run."

"You'll eventually get tired," she mumbled into his hands.

And in mock defense of himself, he moved his face closer to hers as he squeezed her cheeks lovingly and whispered, "Try me, darling." Then before either of them realized what was happening, Roux's mouth was touching hers, his lips dancing with her squished ones until they found a comfortable mesh and he loosened the hold on her cheeks. Isabelle shuddered into the pressure of the kiss, but once she felt his warm breath spread over her lips like wildfire, she let herself fall into utter submission.

There was nothing like it in the world to him, as previously sworn. And to her there was nothing like it in all her dreams of the world, of freedom and possibility somewhere, anywhere outside of Tennessee. Roux's fingers tangled into her hair with a gentle grip as he tilted her head back for better access, an entrance that she offered him with wet, parted lips. He was soft in his method, tender and loving and all the things Isabelle had never known from a lover before. Men where she was from seemed to always be after one thing, and when they didn't get it easily, they left their marks before taking it anyway. Dirk had been a man of many marks. But she realized that Roux was the complete opposite, as he brushed his tongue over the palette of her lips, tasting her, savoring her as if it were a reward of some kind. And that more than anything else, the unknown, left her nervous to continue.

When his tongue's tip reached hers though, it calmed her. Her boots landed on the ground again and her heart beat more steadily. Their mouths danced around one another's in passionate moistness, aiming for the same goal, the one that Isabelle felt creeping down the curve of her back in his gentle fingertips' caress, and the one that Roux sensed in the way she dug her nails into his shoulders and neck. The kiss deepened and the touches did the same, simultaneously. The publicity of the black Paris morning did nothing to prevent it either, as they lost themselves in each other's arms along the waterside. Not until Roux lifted her body from the ground and pressed his weight against hers at the stone wall overlooking the river, did they slow their pace at all and separate to stare into one another's eyes.

In a deep breath on her lips, he whispered a tease. "According t' you Yanks, that makes this a date, eh?"

Isabelle laughed with a single tear rolling down from the corner of her right eye as she clung to him, feeling the bearing hardness of his jeans rub against the thigh of dress. She understood where things were going long before they did, long before she opened her mouth and asked him, "Is it going to end here?"

Oh, she knew.

Roux kissed her temple as her eyes fluttered closed. He kissed the entire plane of her face and neck before finally exhausting with, "Non, il est interminable." Confusion in her eyes as they opened to his again, made him conclude with loving translation. "If ye want it, it's never-ending Izzie."

All she could do was nod, bite her lip and return with a longing desperation in her sensual murmur, "I want it, Roux."


	8. Sweet and Low

**Chapter 7: Sweet and Low**

She had expected to tug him along to her hotel, somehow trample up the stairwell with impossible kisses and touches and needs, and then let Roux make love to her on that disturbingly old bed in her room. She had expected it to be something that would ultimately embarrass her in the process, something that would last until the sun rose again and then be done with despite the French promise he'd left on her lips. Isabelle never once expected what came of her admittance.

"Careful. Watch yer step, doll."

Her boots slid carelessly across the stones of the riverside docks as she shuffled by his side. Roux led her under the bridge and towards the last existing boat, an old wooden fishing schooner. His arm around her waist for protection was different than when he'd kissed her so longingly up above on the café square. It was stronger, more enabled to save her from falling down on the wet ground, but it was no less beautiful a touch to her.

"How long have you had your boat?"

"Oh," he sighed in thought as he carried her down onto the deck of the schooner. "Acquired this gem in South France 'bout six years ago. Then sailed it t' Italy," he dropped her back on the heels of her boots and pulled her hand gently as he led her to the cabin. "Then back home t' Ireland," Isabelle walked inside the small boat chalet, gripping his shirt for a balance against the rocking and then smiled as he turned to her in the darkness and concluded, "An' now I'm here with you."

"But you didn't come here for me."

"Oh no?" He gave her a taunting smirk as he lowered his face to hers in the moonlit blackness. "Who says I didn't come 'ere for just that?"

Isabelle shook her head at him and took his face in her tiny hands, touching her nose to his.

"That would be impossible. You didn't know I would be here."

"I had a sure enough feeling o' it. I knew there was something that brought me 'ere."

The heat of his breath mixed with hers as she asked, "Why did you leave Ireland?"

For a brief moment he thought of Lara's face, her tendrils of red ecstasy and glinting eyes of clover. He hadn't wanted to think of her, but the question brought it all surfacing again. And in his silent thought, as he stared into Isabelle's smiling eyes, he found himself savoring his intuition from the night before as she fed him his own curiosity right back.

"You made me tell you why I left home. Now you tell me why you did. Was it a girl?"

He nodded once and continued to stare without speech. He couldn't think. He couldn't concentrate on any one thing besides her russet eyes, swirled into hazel clouds like a perfect cup of coffee.

"What was her name, Roux?"

"Doesn't matter," he mumbled as he lifted her guitar from her body and set it down. Then he circled his arms around her waist and carried her towards the small built in bed of the wooden bungalow. Isabelle slid down under his hovering weight, the red cotton of her dress rising on her thighs as Roux hugged her body close to his. "I only see you now, mon amour."

At this she fell so deeply that she completely forgot the questioning to be had. He was right, it wasn't important. There were no visible scars to reveal as in her case, only ones that she was sure were better left tied up somewhere, untouched for now. She was satisfied just to know that she wasn't alone in the heartbreak and confusion and the ill illusions that had mystified her for so long. Roux felt it too, he had known that same sort of agony at one point or another, and now he was here with her, relieving it. When he touched her skin it felt like a cleansing rain, one that was working to wash away everything bad. There were no bruises or memories to speak. There was just the darkness, the sound of the rustling sheets and the feeling of his breath on her body as he revealed more and more of it.

****ENTER WARNING****

Isabelle kicked her boots off the edge of the bed at the same moment that Roux tugged her cotton dress overhead, gawking as her hair fell in cascades all around her shed skin. Her tender breasts were a perfect fit for his hand as he cupped one gently and stroked her already risen nipple. With this her back arched into him, her thighs rocking against his waist between them and her hands ran through his hair as it draped on his shoulders in auburn ringlets. A single gasp from her brought his mouth down to taste her lips of the sweetened worth he was already addicted to. Roux knew he could have easily been satisfied with her mouth alone for the rest of his long days. But something else, the touch of her hand as it worked the buttons on his shirt, told of a much further longing in his American girl.

"Waste not, want not, Is."

She smirked between his delicate kisses and unfastened the last button of his aged shirt, pushing it off his caramel shoulders. On her elbows as she rounded into the touch of his teasing fingers on her breast, she pressed her lips to his chin and pecked with a wet mumble, "Can you blame me for wanting all of you?"

Roux shook his head in the low heat of their movement, only then taking notice of how Isabelle had half unhooked his jeans and freed him from all eternal agony. Her small hands on the most sensitive of places, brushing and touching with petal like strokes, made his eyes roll back into his head with an unfurled moan. She knew what she was doing, what she'd done to him, and was well into the effort to find the solution they both needed. And when she had removed from the constricted fabric what longed for only her hand, her body, her warmth, he melted into her honey flavored skin and western kisses until it was her weight hovering over his.

Isabelle straddled his waist and let her golden tresses fall across his chest and neck and face as she kissed him deep, her tongue swirling so nonsensically that it drove him to the last edge. Somehow in the madness she slipped off her matching red lace panties and left her moist, boiling heat settled on his lower stomach, taunting with a rub or two against his opened pants and the solid, awaiting form between. Roux reached out and held her gentle hips in balance, staring into the trenches of her rustic brown eyes, the ones that reminded him of stories he'd been told about the smoke filled foothills of a faraway place called Tennessee. She radiated the spirit of where she'd come from, from the distant path she'd travelled in so short, so desperate a period of time. She was open for him, willing to test the barriers that he swore he wouldn't let exist with her, and for that alone, Roux was committed to Isabelle Taylor without a second thought.

"Ready?" She teased quietly as her breasts just barely danced on his nose.

"More than ye know..."

Isabelle rose and slid her body to the rock solid head of him, having little use for foreplay and little care for other additions to the process. She just needed him, long and hard and wanting deep inside of her. And with no more than a sigh, a groan from Roux and a matching whimper from between her own lips, she fell roughly down against him.

In breathlessness, the first thing she whispered was his name and that was all it took for him to steal the control away again. Roux's arm swarmed her waist as he turned their bodies over to the initial base point, and slowly pulled his hips back before thrusting richly inside of her delicate body once more. The penetration was soul-releasing, the kind that only two people madly in love and too afraid to admit it to themselves so early on, can arrive at.

"Ah God," he laughed darkly against her cheek with another powerful thrash of his body towards hers. "You are lovely."

Isabelle smiled with a tightened cry of ecstasy, "Having an epiphany, are we?"

"An affirmation, darling--"

"Oh," she teased as he thrust long and fiercely back within the confines of her body, breaking the tension of her heart and his with a soft kiss upon her lips.

And then there was no more talking. There was no more air between them to form comprehensible words. There was only breathless begging and misunderstood elation in the midst of caressing skin and driving forces and all the right answers to all the desperate sensations inside both of them. Isabelle's nails dug into the steaming blades of his shoulders, urging him to go faster, to move rougher, to touch her as deep as he possibly could. While Roux's lips on her neck and her breasts told her that he was ready and willing to do all of that and more, forever.

"Yes!" She finally shouted in the confines of their tiny, smoky room. "Yes—_please_, Roux…"

He nipped her breast and rubbed her throbbing center with one more urgent ricochet of his hips, plunging his endless manhood into the most secretive of places in the world, to Isabelle's best kept secret. Then before they realized it, the end had come so naturally, so beautifully and somehow their kindred spirits had released everything in the same sparkling moment. His seed rushed deep inside of her as Isabelle covered Roux in every bit of her body's sweet nectar. He hovered weakly, watching through the blindness of the dark and the glaze in his eyes, at how the sandy haired girl beneath him trembled with a warm grin. It was something he'd never seen before, not in any one woman he'd brought aboard his boat, or made love to on any one shoreline, or riverbank, or coastal balcony. Of all his travels, of all his memories of the world, there was nothing like the smile he saw on her rosy, sated face.

****END WARNING****

"That was--" she lost concentration for a moment and Roux kissed the tip of her clammy nose for inspiration. "That was amazing."

He laughed, "It was."

Isabelle's eyes finally opened wide to him and she arched her body into his, straining for a reminder of what she'd just witnessed and felt. And as he held her skin to his, ready to deliver another round, she concluded in a crooning sort excitement, "That was the best I've ever had. Let's do it again."


	9. Brighter Than Sunshine

**Chapter 8: Brighter Than Sunshine**

The world was shifting, teetering on some unexplainable fault line, back and forth. Isabelle turned over in bed face down in the pillow to ward off the spell of dizziness she felt. She blamed it on her excessive drinking the night before, on the cigarettes and still unforgiving jet lag and the new life she'd tossed herself into. She wanted to know that it was curable by getting out of bed, taking a shower and breathing in a warm cup of coffee like most every morning. But the more the balance of her mind shifted, the more she realized it was a rocking that had woken her, and when she sat up in the warm sheets to look around for a possible seismic catastrophe, she remembered everything all at once.

_I'm on a boat, _she sighed with a certain grin. _Roux's boat..._

Warding off the cool air of the empty cabin with the sheet wrapped around her, Isabelle began frantically searching for her discarded red dress. And when it didn't turn up anywhere on the floor or bed, she instead threw on Roux's wrinkled shirt. Her pink fingernails caressed the tiny holes in the sleeves as she rolled them to her elbows and also across her chest and stomach as she buttoned it to her mid thighs. It was comfortable, smelled like salt breeze and tobacco and best of all, him.

Barefooted and sea-legged, she snuck out of the tiny wooden bungalow and into a burst of mid-day sunlight. The skies were an impossible blue, with only one or two clouds to speak of, and every plank of the boat under her feet was drenched in brightness as she leaned on the first railing she could for balance. She tried to peer against the sun's strength to find Roux, but could only see shadows of the sails and rigging and distant hills.

From four feet away though, out of sight behind her at the opposing rail, Roux snickered at her tipsy consciousness and knotted one last sail rig to the deck. His eyes were enveloped by all of Isabelle. He'd never seen her in this sort of light before, brazen and weary in pure waterlogged sunshine. Her long, honey toned legs seemed to go on for miles before they met the tail fabric of his old blue shirt, and in the other direction, he smiled at how her coral toenails sparkled with every rock of the boat she attempted to master. Her golden hair was offset and messy and revealed every truth of the night before. And all those things killed him silently as he stepped towards her, his bare toes just meeting the heels of her feet as she turned towards him, startled.

"Oh, my Gosh…" She giggled as she grabbed him for equilibrium. "I didn't see you there. It's so bright."

"I think I might know how t' help with that."

"Yeah?"

He nodded and pulled a second pair of sunglasses from his back pocket, sliding them onto her nose with a satisfied eye through his own shades. "There. Ye look right cute, Miss Isabelle."

She gave an exaggerated pucker and movie star tilt of her head to the sky as he laughed and circled his arms around her waist, hugging her body's softness to his. He knew it was an addiction now. That feeling of her pressed to him in all the right places, held by the jaws of his own desperation to feed off of her. It was sheer perfection.

"Good morning," he whispered against her lips. She returned in a half mumble as he cut her off with the heat of his mouth, his kiss driving and forceful, needy and unexpected. She loved every bit of it. Her arms hooked around his neck as he lifted her bare toes from the salty deck, making the end of his shirt ride up the backs of her thighs, practically revealing all of her to the riverbanks they sailed down. It wasn't a concern though, not with the way his tongue felt roving through her mouth, or the way his hair felt between her fingers, or the way his strong arms protected her from the world that had once seemed so frightening.

When her feet hit the boat again and his lips slithered away from hers, all she could do was smile like the universe depended on happiness alone in that moment.

"Good morning," she finally concluded in a breathless murmur on his neck. "You kidnapped me."

Roux chuckled, "I did. For all intensive purposes, o' course."

"_Intensive purposes_?"

"There's something I want you t' see."

"Something special?"

With a soft nuzzle of his face towards hers, a tantalizing rub of her lower back and a kiss on her forehead, she had her confirmation.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

**Giverny, ****France**

"Where are we, Roux? _Seriously_…"

His hand tangled with hers was all she knew for safety. He led her on a pathway to nowhere she could determine really, except that it was outside, near water, and heavily shadowed by trees and other things that brushed against the skirt of her dress as they walked. He had blindfolded her with an ancient bandana the second they had stepped off the boat on the banks of a small river village. She had no opportunity to guess where she was, or read a sign, or expect an answer from Roux.

"Bonjour."

"Bonjour," Roux whispered back to a pair of women who were softly laughing at the bandana covering Isabelle's eyes. "Je suis ici pour surprendre ses. Je vais romance son pantalon."

He was purposefully speaking in French to keep her confused as he wrapped his arm tighter around her waist and led her past the 'Oh's' and 'Ahs' of the older women. There seemed to be a whim of heartfelt emotion in their sighing humor, and it only kept her lost in wondering where they were headed. It didn't take long for Roux to admit they had arrived, when she heard her boots stomping on the wooden planks of a small incline, and realized it was some kind of a bridge.

"What did you say to those women?"

Roux tugged at the knot of the bandana as he pressed his nose and lips into her hair, inhaling the impossible sweetness of it, even through sleep and evening ardor.

"I told them that ye were madly in love with me." Isabelle gulped at the teasing of his quieted words as she felt the bandana loosening slowly. "An' I told them that this was the only way I could get rid o' you."

"What?"

He laughed and let the cloth fall from her eyes as the darkness was replaced with only brightness and beauty. The sun she could feel on her bared shoulders, now cascaded down over the trees she could sense and smell, circling countless flowers, wild and not, where upon the light sparkled on the surface of the water, a streaming pond. And twirling slowly over that same green plane, were millions of water lilies, of every possible shape and size and color. They drifted underneath the bridge one by one as she watched in awe, and it was only when she had fully taken in the magnificence he'd promised, that she finally took fair notice of the those same two arms that had protected her since day one in Paris. Roux kissed the top of her head as she felt water pooling in her eyes, half blocking the exquisiteness of the scene before her.

"Any idea where we are now, love?"

Isabelle held onto his arms as she leaned over the ancient wooden rail of the bridge, staring at her reflection in the water below. Roux's chin rested on her shoulder, his lips at the curve of her neck breathing her in, and it was suddenly the most perfect thing in the world.

"I think I've seen this place before somewhere." He smiled against her skin and hugged her body more closely to his. "I know this place. Why do I know this place?"

"Can I lend you a hint?"

She turned back to see his honest eyes and nodded. Then Roux moved a hand from her waist to gently reach for one of hers, stretching it out over the bridge. His hand controlled her index finger as he began to trace over the scenery, using it as an imaginary brush, stroking each flower and swirling every ripple in the water. And when Isabelle realized just what he was doing, she smiled and fell deeper into his arms.

"The water lilies." His touch softened with the strokes of her finger on the distant lily pads. "It's Monet, isn't it? This is the garden, his garden."

Roux stopped moving her hand about and instead brought it back towards his lips, where he kissed each of her knuckles and then her palm as she eyed him sensually.

"I wanted t' show you the place that first inspired me t' paint. You're the only person I've ever brought 'ere with me."

"Why did you bring me then?"

"Because," he murmured low and sweet. "As quick as it seems, I know you're mine. Somehow I know. I need you, Izzie."

Isabelle felt a tingle run the course of her spine, this time at the claim he'd made of her again, more so than from the kisses. She spun around in his arms with her back to the rail and stared longingly into his eyes, wanting to find something wrong with him, desperate to find the glitch in the equation. She didn't believe for a second it could be that impossibly sublime, the two of them, this.

"I need all o' you. I can't think straight when you're not 'round. I can't be simple 'bout it either. I don't want t' be simple with you." He looked straight into her eyes, his forehead pressed lovingly to hers as he softly hummed words she didn't think she'd be able to stand from anyone again, and especially not so immediately. "I want to give you the whole world, starting right 'ere in Giverny."

She sighed with tears forming at the corners of her eyes, and he swiftly brushed them away.

"What are you saying, Roux?"

"I'm saying that I think I'm falling in love you, Isabelle. And I want t' love you for as long as you'll let me."

Her heart stopped beating in her chest as one single teardrop fell between the closeness of their bodies. Everything about them was so rapid and seemed to be moving at the speed of light. It had been two days and two nights. No more. And yet here he was, standing in front of her on a bridge, offering himself to her, offering her anything and everything he could give, the world even. It had been a week only since she'd flown out of Tennessee without a second care except getting away for good. Then he stepped into the picture and had torn down every last barrier her heart had built over the years. Roux had softened Isabelle back to a healthy romantic and to the passionate self she'd missed for too long.

"Did ye hear me, love?"

His hand stroking her cheek brought her to reality and she nodded with a wistful smile.

"I heard you."

"You look scared."

"No, I'm not." Isabelle wrapped her arms around him and nuzzled her face in his chest. "I promise. I've never been happier." He could sense she wasn't ready to return the affection, whether she felt it for him or not, but it didn't bother him. Just to hold her, just to know she wanted him to hold her, was more than enough for any man in his opinion.

They stayed tied up in each other's arms for what felt like eternity, kissing and dancing on the tiny bridge to no music at all, except the trickling of the pond water beneath their feet and the breezy rustle in the trees. There was nothing else in the universe but them that afternoon. Roux wined and dined her in the village of Giverny until the sun began to sink over the hillside. And before they set sail for a return to the twinkling lights of Paris, he made love to her as softly as he'd ever made love. He cherished every inch of Isabelle and swore he saw in the spark of her eyes, the additional promise that she would soon be as much his as he swore he was hers.


	10. Fire and Rain

**Chapter 9: Fire and Rain**

After a night of playing for an extended Sunday crowd in the pub, Roux and Isabelle slept in to the sound of rain pattering against the windows of her hotel room. Monday was a closed day at O'Sullivans, but he'd promised to go in and repair a few broken planks in the wood floor, since Danny and Conner were both thoroughly incapable. He didn't mind, especially since fixing things gave Roux a chance to think in ways that painting and playing music could never do. There was something about the sound of a hammer that shook his brain into careful thoughtfulness, a place he loved, almost as much as he loved the sensation of turning over and wrapping his arms around a bare brazen, yellow-haired American girl.

Isabelle fell into his warmth in subconscious thankfulness. She couldn't ask for anything more than the touch of his strong arm coiled around her body, pulling her as close as space and time would allow, and his lips kissing the curve of her neck to shoulder and down the plane of her long arm as he twisted his fingers in hers. She grinned hopelessly at the tickle of his soft mustache and the way his kisses ran parallel to the drizzling rain on the cobblestone street below her room.

"I have t' go fix that bloody floor at the bar," he whispered into her ear as she turned her prying eyes back slowly.

"Want some company?"

"No need lovely." He kissed the corner of her right eyebrow where a freckle was perfectly drawn by nature. "Stay here an' sleep some more. I'll be back before ye know it."

"Are you sure? I don't mind."

Roux smiled, wanting to beg her to come with him, to sit and play tunes while he fought with nails and sawdust, wanting to have her at his side no matter what. But he figured it just as well that she slept so that he would have something to look forward to when he came back and found her in the same soft, unclothed position at sunset.

"I'm sure," he finally replied as he tilted her face further towards him, kissing her tenderly. "Stay and keep th' bed warm for me, Izzie."

"Why don't you warm it up for me before you leave?"

The suggestion in her dangerous blue eyes was killer, all pleading and all wanting, and it made his heart fall into a million pieces while his lips fell all over her, from the top of her golden head to the tips of her ruby toes. He tasted her until his mouth had run dry from listless panting, and he caressed her skin until his fingers grew numb of heated activity. As much as it pained him to have to get dressed with her rolling helplessly around in a tangle of sweet smelling sheets, he knew the image would be more than enough to consume his mind while he worked. Roux kissed her once more, _longingly_, before he turned for the door, winked a goodbye from the hall and tore down the old steps of the corner hotel.

As he walked along through the wet streets of Paris, headed blocks away for the pub, he only saw Isabelle, everywhere, in every lingerie shop display and every flower cart with swarming twists of daisies. He saw her in every face of every woman he passed, no matter the hair color or the eye color or the length of her legs. There were no other women in the world to him. There was only a honeyed southern twang in his ear and the lingering aftertaste of rose scented soap, only hers. All he could think was to hum; to find just the right melody to describe what she was and what his Izzie was doing to him. And then suddenly, as he turned the last corner for O'Sullivans near the museum, he knew.

_She's the best I've ever had. _

The thought though, as beautiful and consuming as it was to him, became of little importance when he moved out of the cold rain and into the fiery heat of the pub, coming face to face with a cabernet lipped Fiona. She was teetering on the top step of a wobbly ladder, trying to replace a string of lights that had burned out the night before. And the way her saucy red heels curved with her ankle, the way her legs stretched higher and higher and higher until they disappeared under the hem of her skirt, was as unfair of a view as he could have possibly _not_ asked for.

"Roux, ye came early."

He coughed to distract himself from the vision in the air and wandered towards the ladder, holding it as Fiona stepped down seductively, her hand brushing his shoulder for balance on purpose.

"I thought ye might have forgotten bout' the floor."

"Course not," he mused as she landed with two clacks onto the wood floor in her heels. "It's my job isn't it? Fixing things?"

"Tis' indeed." Fiona's hands framed her hips as she sauntered past Roux and headed for the cracked planks near the stage front. "Danny set th' tools out for ye, said e' wasn't sure you still ad' yours on that boat or not."

"Still--_some_," was all Roux could think to say as he examined the damage of the wood floor with a stroking hand. "This shouldn't take too long."

"No?"

He shook his head with a smile as Fiona lingered close by, studying from over his shoulder with eyes that only truly studied him. She was glad to see him alone, glad that he hadn't brought his constant tag-along in for a day of constructive romancing. She was glad that she had him all to herself for the afternoon, through the sensual sound of the pouring rain, in the emptied pub, at the disposal of only her wants and needs. But ever the curious woman, Fiona felt she had to know something of Isabelle, something more, something that perhaps wasn't being said to her. So in proper European fashion, she began the art of feminine prying.

"No _Miss America_ today? Thought ye two were getting t' be close nah, Roux."

He immediately detected the sound of jealousy in her voice and tried to ignore it as long as was possible. _Yes_, he felt guilty for what he seemed to be doing to Fiona, one of his longest friends in life, one of the most beautiful women he'd come to know and come to love at times. _Yes_, he wished he could apologize to her for having found true love in someone more 'in tune' with him. But the only problem with that was the fact that he didn't think there was any real reason why he should apologize to Fiona. She had never wanted him legitimately in the past. She had never once asked for him exclusively before. And he had never promised her that he _wouldn't_ find someone else, someone as perfect as Isabelle.

"Danny said ye took her up t' Giverny fer the day." He stiffened as he knelt and began prying the boards from the floor, trying to occupy his tense energy into the project instead of into the conversation boiling up. But when Fiona opened her mouth again and said, "Must be some girl t' deserve such attention from ye," he couldn't contain it anymore. Roux stopped his movement and turned his head back up at her, a tired scowl on his face.

"Wot's the point, Fiona?"

"No point," she smiled with a forced sweetness as she leaned over a chair towards him. "Just saying is all."

"Saying what?"

"Nothing, forget it."

With a heavy breath he rose to his feet again and stood above where she straddled the chair. He knew there was something she wanted to say, something that she was hesitating with on purpose, just to spare him, or better yet, to draw him in further.

"Wot' is it? Wot' do ye have t' say about her? I can see it in your face."

"And so ye do, I have a lot t' say 'bout her."

"Well go on then," he demanded angrily with a slight swing of the hammer.

"Maybe I will." Her response was soft and resolute as she stood from the chair and waltzed back behind the bar, occupying her hands with a wet rag and dirtied glasses, trying to get the best of him the way only she ever had. "Maybe I'll tell ye just wot' I think o' you bringing that pretty little, charity case in here."

He rolled his eyes shut as he walked toward the bar after her, standing on the stool side as she went on in her disheartened explanation.

"She belongs in a bloody cabaret. Red light district if I do say so meself."

"Ye would," he replied in disgust. "You never have learned t' share a stage."

"It's not 'bout sharing a stage. It's about you giving out rations t' the poor, to those that don't belong. She's not one o' us."

"An' what are we, Fiona?" His voice raised an octave as he gripped the ledge of the bar with a fire growing in his black eyes. "What do we have that she doesn't? Us, a pack of Irish rebels in th' middle o' Paris?"

Fiona was quiet for a long moment as she stared at Roux, stared straight into his heart. Then with one last wipe of the second to last glass, she dropped it to the wood counter softly and sighed as she replied, "She doesn't love ye, Roux. She's never going t' love you, not the way I do, not th' way I always _have_."

And just like that, he understood it all. It had nothing to do with Isabelle fitting into their little club, into their vagabond band. It had merely to do with Fiona not wanting Isabelle to fit into the picture that she had already painted for herself. He'd known that she adored him, he'd always known that she'd cared for him the way he had her, but never had he guessed or tried to assume that it was love clouding her from making friends with Isabelle. Fiona had never been a true lover, not the way he was at least. She was a fleeting kiss on a cold night in the bows of passion. But now he saw through it all, now he saw what was lighting the fire in the middle of the rain between him and her, and her and the woman he loved.

It was the pain of only more love.

Despite it though, he couldn't allow himself to believe Fiona's words, that Isabelle could never love him, or that she never would. That he knew could not be true. It had been a week since he'd known her, days only since he'd told her the truth of his own feelings on that steep bridge in the middle of a watercolor paradise. But that didn't mean that Isabelle wouldn't love him the very same, eventually. That didn't mean that Isabelle didn't want what Fiona was after, _forever_.

"I don't know wot' ye expect me t' say." He breathed slowly, trying to find the best words, the gentlest ones. She only stared back at him with one last glass in her hand, eyes twinkling with fierce emotion. "I love ye, Fiona. But I'm not _in love_ with ye, I never have been. I never thought ye were."

"Things can change, Roux."

"Aye," he sighed as he scratched his head in confusion. "An' I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she snarled as she wiped down the final glass. "You've made it all so damned clear. Ye love th' wannabe, American pop-star."

"Isabelle."

Fiona bit her lip before shouting, "Wot' does it matter? It's a name, another name o' another girl you've charmed. So be it then. Hold onto her until ye see that she doesn't want what it is yer after."

"Ye don't know that."

"Yes I do, I know that she's a little Yankee liar and she--" It was as she grew angrier, more determined in the argument against all things Isabelle, that the bell on the doorway chimed and a quick gust of rainy wind came pouring into the warmed pub. Roux and Fiona turned at the same time, mid-argument, to see the source of all the havoc. Isabelle smiled with an innocent gleam in her sparkling blue eyes and his whole world became bright again, for one shining moment. And then it all came crashing down with the deathly sound of smashing glass on the bar top. He jumped in his skin, same as Isabelle, when they both saw that Fiona had thrown the last beer glass in anger and was storming away upstairs from the bar in a heated flash.

Roux sighed with his hands in his pockets, broken in two without wanting to be. But then he heard the guilty softness in Isabelle's voice and turned to see her coming in closer, her boots like music against the scratched woodwork, the aroma of her skin like a full course meal to his senses, and nothing could have been worse to him than that.

"It's me isn't it? She doesn't want me here anymore."

His heart was crushed by the look in her eyes, changed so suddenly from the original sparkle.

"No," Roux finally mumbled. "Fiona she just—it's not you, it's--"

"It's alright." She filled in his uncertainty with a small bit of hope, false hope, and hope he didn't like the sound of at all. "This is your home. She's part of your family, Roux. I've come between you and your family, and I'm sorry."

"Isabelle. Stop."

She did, and just the way she stood, motionless, breathless in front of him, perfectly imitated the way the rain fell against the windows of the bar. It was a murdering sort of sensation that washed over him in the moments they stared from one to the other, between the silence and the cars streaming by outside and the sound of slamming doors from a faraway distance at the top of the stairs. For a long time he didn't know what he wanted to say to her, but when he looked up from his boot toes and saw her eyes, glowing and curious and patient, he knew exactly what he wanted to say, and he wasted no time in throwing the point out there for Isabelle alone to catch. He stepped toward her and took her in his arms, brushing through her unruly curls, tracing the contours of her strawberry cheeks and breathing in the same sweet scent he had left her bathing in on the sheets of her bed earlier.

"You're staying," he whispered firmly. "You're staying right here, with me, t' sing your little heart out, Izzie."

She grinned slowly, letting the words wash away the pain.

"This is where ye want t' be, right here an' nowhere else, yeah?"

Isabelle nodded with an innocent twist of her lips.

"Then ye stay. There's nothing t' run from here, I promise."

"But Fiona she--"

"Don't," he pleaded as he stroked her cold cheeks in his warm hands. "Don't even think o' what she has t' say about it. I told ye I need all o' you, only you Is. I want t' give you everything, I do. Don't leave me now."

Tears didn't come to her, but sheer comfort did fill her entire being in that moment. Isabelle felt herself getting closer and closer, deeper and deeper into the madness, falling only that much nearer to the truth of the matter in her heart. Every time he said things like that to her, every time he made a new claim or swore on nature that she was his if she wanted it, it only made her want it all the more and for that much longer. And as she rose on the tiptoes of her old boots to press her mouth lightly to his, leaving butterfly kisses on his lips, his chin, every inch of his visible face, in her mind she swore, _It won't be long now. I can feel it coming already. I'm going to be in love with this man before I know it…_


	11. Crazy in LOVE

**Chapter 10: Crazy in L.O.V.E**

Two more weeks came and went like a century flying by. Every day was an adventure for Roux and Isabelle, whether they were sailing to small river villages in search of the perfect pastry shops, or the most beautiful landscapes for Roux to paint, or the best locales of seclusion for them to make sweet, passionate love upon. They played together at O'Sullivans almost every night without exceptions or want of such. And when Fiona left them in sheer envy after each set, when Danny and Connor found themselves the subject of the crowds of women waiting around the bar, Isabelle and Roux would spend until the sunrise again, walking the emptied streets of Paris in deep conversation, in debate, and most importantly of all, in each other's arms.

When they slept, which wasn't often enough between their sensual frolicking, they laid tangled in the warmth of each other's bodies on Roux's boat, and on the colder nights, stretched from head to toe on the squeaky old bed in Isabelle's room. He refused to let her stay at the hotel alone at night, for reasons he swore were 'depressing enough' to make her want to never go back at all. She had no trouble with it though, not when she knew she could wake up every morning, turn over and see him smiling back at her. That was more than enough. That was the world he'd promised and then some.

It was dawn on one of the few nights they'd had off from singing, when Isabelle slid from Roux's arms as he snoozed peacefully, and reached for her guitar at the foot of the small bed. She sat with her legs tangled in the sheets, her bared front draped against the old wooden instrument on her knees, and played softly into the dark blue air surrounding the boat's cabin. All of an hour later, with a crumble of paper on the mattress beside her, an ink pen trembling between her teeth and a shiver running her spine from the touch of something warmer than the room itself, something more genuine, she turned to see two crystal black eyes smiling up at her as Roux kissed the freckles at the small of her back.

"Did I wake you?"

"Ye did," he teased as he caressed her skin in the early light of day.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not."

Isabelle smirked as she switched her attention to the strings under her fingers again, strumming casually while Roux reached for the piece of paper at her side. She tried to grab it to protect herself from harsh critique of the words dabbled onto it, of the lyrics that just refused to come, but he beat her to it.

"A song," he acknowledged quietly as he hummed his own self made tune to the emotions spilled on the page.

"It's not finished yet."

He grinned at the shyness lingering in her voice and returned the paper to her as he relaxed into the pillows again, stroking her skin until she eventually shifted towards him, legs curled and the guitar propped on her knees, hiding the view he longed for behind it.

"You're supposed to say, 'Well Izzie, let me hear what you _do_ have then…'"

Roux laughed with tired eyes, "Am I then?"

"Yes."

"Right, so let me hear it."

Her eyes widened in surprise, "You want to?"

She humored him in ways no one ever truly had. Her fruitful innocence that came and went with determination was almost too much to bear at times. But he did, gratefully so. And Roux half sat up next to her under the sheets, his fingers tapping on her knees as he leaned over the guitar to reach her lips and whisper, "Sing for me, _please_."

"Kiss me first."

"Hmm," he teased in contemplation against her mouth. "Ye drive a hard bargain."

Isabelle puckered her lips with closed eyes until he took advantage of the plea and held the nape of her neck hostage, crushing her with passion. His fingers twirled through her soft yellow curls, leading her to him despite the guitar that half blocked their touching hands and wandering legs under the sheets. His tongue consumed her mouth with a blazing fire, the one she'd needed through the early morning, through the whole night while she'd slept. It was something she couldn't deny anymore, try as she might. And she realized as they came unwound from each other and as he kissed both of her eyelids open again, that what she was seeing had to be some master plan, something larger than she was maybe. Or at least larger than the '_she'_ that Isabelle had always thought of herself as being.

"Let's hear it, darling."

Breathless and drowning in his eyes, she returned the guitar to its proper place in her lap. She strummed to the beat she had studied in her mind and glanced over the paper that sat beside Roux's leg, scanning for the words to begin as the tune picked up, ever so slightly. It was a soft melody, soft like Roux's hands, like his lips. And Isabelle cherished every small stroke of the instrument, wanting it to be perfect, just as he was.

**I've never gone with the wind**

**Just let it flow…**

**Let it take me where it wants to go.**

**Till you open the door, there's so much more**

**I've never seen it before…**

Roux couldn't help but to smile in quaint satisfaction at the words as they flowed free of her tender lips. She was like nothing he'd ever known, like nothing he'd ever experienced or dreamed up even. His Isabelle was untouchable, unthinkable, and too good to be true at most moments, most importantly this one.

**I was trying to fly but I couldn't find wings**

**You came along and you changed everything…**

She'd written those words for him, for the love he could sense she wanted so badly but didn't know how to fall into it. And that modesty in passion alone was enough to undo him at the seams. Isabelle turned her eyes up to see Roux's smiling, proud face. In earnest, she let her fingers continue the tune as she watched his reaching out to touch her cheek, to hold her there with him, in that small memory minute. Then as the seconds dwelled in need of the chorus she had scratched onto the paper, she refocused on what little she had left to share with him, to give him in return for everything he'd given her so far.

**You life my feet off the ground**

**You spin me around**

**You make me crazier, crazier…**

**Feels like I'm falling and I'm lost in your eyes**

**You make me crazier, crazier, crazier…**

The blood was boiling from his brain to the tips of Roux's toes as Isabelle came down from her rhythmic high with a gentle ease of the guitar strings under her fingers. The song stopped softly where it had yet to be completed, and as she glanced up at him with a tear in her eye, all he could do was touch his forehead to hers, stroke through her tangled web of hair and breathe her in.

"That's all I have so far," she whispered innocently.

From between them, Roux lifted one of her hands from the guitar and placed each of her fingertips to his lips, one by one, leaving tiny kisses where her skin burned from playing. Isabelle watched him through hazy eyes, surrendering herself to the silence of his ways, to the need for few words. Four words were enough, the ones she loved to hear and prayed soon she'd return.

"I love you, Is."

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

**O'Sullivans**

****WARNING****

As Roux hurried down the steps from the apartment above the pub the next evening, lingering in laughter with Danny and shuffling towards the growing crowds in the bar, he was prevented from moving beyond the archway of the hall. The door of the cellar swung open, and from inside, an arm reached out and pulled him back within by his shirt as he laughed. In the darkness he fell against the shelving of relic wine and beer, giving into the blind sensation of the two small hands travelling over his entire body. Even in utter blackness, he knew just who it was. If there was one thing he'd come to quickly learn about Isabelle, it was that she had a keen sense of surprise and reflexes like a kitten in assault mode, all despite her constant clumsiness. And he had to admit, as he felt her fingers working on his belt and tossing it away, that it was one more thing about her, that he loved beyond the realm of understanding.

"Excited t'night are we, love?"

Isabelle worked the buttons of his shirt one by one, kissing his chest as she followed the soft trail of hair she could feel on her lips in the dark, saying not a word. She could hear the deep hums in the back of his throat as she went on, teasing him with her slow fingers over the button and zipper on his jeans. Not seeing his face but recognizing the sound of desire in his laughter and pleas alone was what she had wanted. She wanted to experience his pleasure through blindness, to know Roux like no one could know Roux.

"Izzie, ye know we have a set to--"

"Sh." She finally whispered as she pulled his straining cock from the tight confines of his jeans, kneeling before him with a tiny giggle. "This won't take long."

Before he could further protest it, he felt the softness of her two wet lips sliding over the heated rigidity of the ache she held in her tiny hand. Roux could do nothing but laugh, throw his head back to the shelf and thank some higher power for the moment. He could see nothing, but when his manhood fell deeper inside of her small mouth and her tongue massaged left and right, up and down upon the begging flesh, he felt the world rocking underneath his boots.

"God--" He gritted his teeth together and bit his own tongue for control. "_Isabelle_, I need--"

Her movements all swirled together in one delicately violent pattern after another minute, and then another. His legs began to shake as her warm hand moved up his bared stomach, reaching to almost his chest when he took possession of it with his, squeezing tenderly. Her mouth worked smoothly over him, from the tip and back as she pinched the trembling sacs beneath, taunting him, leaving him breathless. So that when there was nothing left to feel but pure ecstasy, Roux gave in to her actions and shuddered to his grateful release upon her wanting lips. And when all had been taken greedily, she slowly worked her way back up to his mouth with a path of feathery kisses.

****END WARNING****

"Feeling better?" She murmured at the corner of his mouth, stirring Roux to wrap his arms around her and hug her close to him, calming the spell she'd cast.

"You're a rush o' blood to me head, darling."

Isabelle laughed nervously, "Good thing?"

Roux pressed his lips harshly to hers where he could taste his own washed away passion, revealing his heart with the kiss and proving his gratitude.

"It's th' best thing."

Once he'd fumbled in the dark with her assistance to clean the evidence of what she'd done, he took her hand softly in his and hurried to the door again.

"Come on. I do believe I hear th' crowd calling for ye."

He was right. The second they turned unsuspectingly out of the cellar to the whimsical lights of the pub, as soon as she hurried towards the stage on his boot heels and saw the constant audience, the rowdy locals and continued fans of her presence, she felt at home. She felt like she belonged somewhere safe and warm and wanting for once in her life, instead of that place she had always tried to get out of, that _other_ Paris. This was her rush of blood to the head. This was Isabelle's one wish.

She walked slowly to the microphone like any other night, but before Roux could lift his guitar off the stand at her side, and before the crowd could get comfortable with their popular double act, Isabelle stopped everything with compromise.

"If you all don't mind, I'm going to _kindly_ ask Roux to step down for this first song." She batted her eyelashes at him as he stepped towards her, curiosity lingering on his brow. "_Please_," she then whispered away from the microphone and to only him.

He paused for a moment, not wanting to give in to her sneaky smile so easily, but too far gone by the look in her eyes leftover from their cellar rendezvous, to say anything but, "If ye insist, _princess_." And with a kiss on top of her head that made Fiona's ears blow steam, Roux took off to find a seat among the mass of his friends and drinking buddies.

Isabelle breathed in deep as she gained the silent attention of every pair of eyes and ears in the pub. It wasn't a difficult a task, not like it had been her very first night for example. They loved her. They trusted her here. And staring down into the crowd to see Roux for a change was what sweetened the deal and helped her to finally move back towards the piano on the stage. She sat down slowly with jittering knees and tapping boots as she touched the toe of one to the pedal of the instrument. She adjusted the microphone to her level, slid her clammy fingertips to the appropriate keys, and whispered a gentle explanation for the curious group.

"This is a song that I wrote just yesterday, and I wasn't quite sure how I was going to end it until I woke up this morning. I finally realized how I _wanted_ it to end." Isabelle smiled with moisture in her eyes as she turned to look out on the dimly lit tables of people, between the flickering candles and cigarettes to see Roux staring back. His eyes were open and wanting as he shook his head in some sort of obvious amazement. She winked to him and concluded, "I know what I want it to be now."

Everyone knew what she was getting at and why she hadn't wanted her other musical half to be a part of the song. He couldn't be a part of it, because he was the song. Roux was Isabelle's every word as she lulled through the first verse. His boot tapped along to the easy, harmonious beat he remembered from the morning before in their tiny little bed. It had sounded more raspy, more grainy on her acoustic guitar than it did presently, on the tinkling of piano keys. And he was so lost in _her_, that he nearly missed when the new verse began, the one that would hold all the secrets he hadn't yet heard.

**I watched from a distance as you made life your own**

**Every sky was your own kind of blue.**

**And I, wanted to know how that would feel**

**And you made it so real…**

**You showed me something that I couldn't see**

**You opened my eyes and you made me believe…**

**You lift my feet off the ground,**

**You spin me around**

**You make me crazier, crazier—**

**Feels like I'm falling and I'm lost in your eyes**

**You make me crazier, crazier, crazier, oh…**

While the words spilled free and clear and true of her gut, Isabelle felt every beat of her heart matching one that she could only hear inside of her mind, _his_. It burned her, like the haunting of a ghost, like something unnatural and strange, but she was drawn to it as she sang. She stopped playing the piano out of some superstitious force, a welling that seemed to be bubbling in her chest, where that same beating continued more harshly. She rose from the piano seat with the microphone in hand and sang her way to the front edge of the stage, where she jumped down into the tangled web of the crowd as they gawked and laughed at her thwarting beauty. And with a stride to where Roux sat with an intrigued smirk at the corner of his mouth to match the black haze in his eyes, Isabelle wrapped her arm around his neck and fell down into his lap. She pressed her forehead to his the same as he had done to her the morning before, when all she could feel was him in the world. Slowly, she sang to him the same, as if they were the only two people in the room again, in the whole city of Paris, in the world.

**Baby, you showed me what living is for**

**I don't want to hide anymore…**

There was no sound but her voice. There were no movements, no thoughts but those she could feel and see boiling up in Roux's eyes beneath hers. And right there, while straddling his legs in her tiny blue dress, with her boots dangling off both sides of the chair, his hands firm on her hips as his lips silently begged to do the same to her mouth, Isabelle told him everything he needed to know in one last, starry-eyed chorus.

**You lift my feet off the ground**

**You spin me around**

**You make me crazier, crazier…**

**Feels like I'm falling**

**And I'm lost in your eyes**

**You make me crazier, crazier, crazier…**

And where the song ended, was where Isabelle hoped she was feeling the rest of her life beginning. Roux stared at her for a long moment as the crowd slowly, surely recognized the fade to the ode and began to applaud. It was gentle at first, uncertain in the silence of the pair's longing gaze. But when Roux threw warnings to the wind, followed the directions laid out before him in the song and wrapped both of his arms firmly about Isabelle's tiny waist, lifting her from his lap in was swarming spin through the middle of the floor, that's when the real cheering began. He kissed her face like mad as she laughed wildly through the noise of the crowd, her golden mane flying with the same momentum as Roux's feet down below. She hugged his neck for safety and a million other perfect reasons, kissing him back wherever she could seem to reach, and finally whispering in secrecy, where no screaming locals or drunken fans or envious red-heads could hear, "I'm crazy in love with you, Roux."

* * *

Song: **CRAZIER** By: _Taylor Swift_


	12. Stars and Boulevards

**Chapter 11: Stars and Boulevards **

The world seemed to be rushing by, turning and churning at the blink of an eye, as if Isabelle were stuck on some sort of wheel, one she wanted to be on. The wind blew through her wild mass of curls, whirring in her ears like music as it drifted from one end of the train to the next. Her hands gripped the railing tightly as she leaned as far over as she could safely, her eyes glued to the flashing tracks as sparks flew up from under the wheels of the speeding last car. She felt free, in ways she could only feel in this place, this other side of the world, the side that always spun on a clear-minded axis, the side without fear or want of it. The only thing that could ever disturb the moment, was the one thing that had so granted it's possibility, the mastermind behind the whole journey.

"Don' go falling overboard on me," Roux mused with a tease in her ear as he wrapped his arms firmly around her, leaning in as he hugged her to the railing. "I'd cry forever, darling."

Isabelle smiled as she held onto his arms more for comfort than safety. Then she turned her face back to his, her hair cascading between them as she replied, "Would you really?"

"I would, don't ye believe me?"

"Forever's a long time," she mocked him as she melted with an arch of her back into his chest, closing in what little space was left. "I think there's only one way to really know the truth." Softly then, she drew his arms away from her waist and walked to the opposite side of the train deck, straddling the railing in her white sundress and boots when Roux felt his heart leap free of his chest and ran after her.

"Izzie—_Jesus_!"

He latched a strong arm around her body and pulled her from the iron railing as she laughed out wildly, falling down to her boot heels with his second arm to steady her. Onlookers from the inside of the last train car gaped and gawked with fear in their eyes as Roux shook his head and kissed hers without restraint, certain he'd nearly lost her for real.

"I'm fine," she begged with giggles against his constant kisses. "_Roux_—I'm alive!"

"An' let's keep it that way!" He shouted out above the whizzing air.

Isabelle hugged his neck as he twirled her around so that he was leaning on the back end of the train and she was pressed to his weight, her boot toes balanced on top of his. With her nose buried in the contented space of his neck, breathing him in as he warmed her from the cooling breeze of the mountain trail, she murmured tiny bits of everything on his skin.

"Where exactly are we going this time?"

"It's a surprise," he warned with a squeeze of her ass through her dress as she gasped.

To which she fought back with a choking tug of his aged necktie.

"I'm tired of surprises. Tell me."

"No."

"_Roux_…"

He loved that she sounded like a child too anxious to wait for Christmas morning. He loved that she was warm and soft even in the blurring cold of the train's outer limits. He loved that she had agreed to follow him without knowing where they were headed, or where he was taking her, or where she might end up this time. He loved that she was patient enough to be impatient when they travelled. And what he loved most was that for almost another two hours of journeying further south into the bows of the French hills, on a whirlwind excursion of chance and unpredictability, that she never left his arms. Even when she very clearly could or when he thought she might have, she didn't. She stayed, just as he'd asked her to weeks ago. She held onto him like there was nothing else to do, nothing better to see or be near or know than him. That, of everything else he loved about this girl, was his favorite.

The train pulled into _Avignon Station_ at two o'clock, and unable to contain herself, Isabelle pulled Roux through the aisles of the cars, practically knocking the other passengers out of the way as he apologized in French at her expense and then laughed the whole way out to the platform. While she stood studying the maps and schedules on a board, trying to figure out just where she was and just where they were going, Roux startled her from the cross examination as he wrapped his arms around her and carried her away in a giggling fit that made every other head turn to them. He walked with Isabelle dangling from his arms as he hailed a cab on the lower street corner, finding that the task was easily done when the taxi drivers noticed a screaming, daisy curled American in the position she was. When five different cars pulled up for them alone, he picked the closest and they were off for somewhere else, sparing no second.

"Aren't you going to blindfold me again?" Isabelle teased as she sat curled under his arm.

"No need. You'll never figure this one out."

"And you're so sure about that?"

With a soft laugh, he nuzzled his mouth to the curls over her ear and whispered, "_Positively_. Any more questions?"

"Not yet," she mused as she closed her eyes and rested on his chest. "But wait around. I'm sure more will come to me."

Shaking his head and staring out of the window at the valleys and fields and spiraling hills of a place he'd known all too well once upon a time, all he could think to say was, "Such a comic ye are, Izzie Taylor," as he coiled her long hair about his fingertips and dreamed up just what she would say when they arrived, when he showed her what he'd never shown anyone before,_ again_. _'I'm crazy in love with you, Roux. I'm crazy in love with you, Roux…'_ It was all that seemed to want to play over in his mind. It was unstoppable and had been since the night before, since the second she first whispered it. It was the only answer he'd needed, the only thing he was waiting on in the whole of the world. And now that he had it, there was nothing holding him back from everything else.

The taxi stopped abruptly an hour later at the cobblestone curb and woke Isabelle up with a startled smile that made Roux laugh as he paid for the drive. They stumbled out together and onto the street as she searched for any signs of her location, finding it on a single, ancient road sign, half tilted on its rusting pole.

"_St. Remy de Provence_," she hummed as Roux squeezed her hand and led her further down the dusty street. They seemed to walk on forever, sometimes in silence, sometimes in flighty debate about the place, but always in a cascading sort of excitement. Not until they had gone an uncalculated three miles or so, (the last mile of which Isabelle had spent on Roux's back in exhaustion), did they finally come to the first place he had planned on revealing to her.

"This is it."

She raised her head from his shoulder and looked around as she slid from his back in stunned glory. Before her was a canvas, like so many others she'd seen since coming to the country, but this one was magical in an almost dark sort of way. It was a rolling valley of hills and homes that were shaded in the late afternoon sun, alternating between blues and rich greens. It was a town, St. Remy, a beautiful little niche of a place in the middle of France, quiet and quaint and contented to just be as it seemed to be from hundreds of years ago. Isabelle was drawn to it, in ways she had never even been to Paris upon arrival, or of the gardens at Giverny. This was something else entirely; something that took her back to a small town called Paris, Tennessee, where everyone had an equally modest home, in the middle of equally modest farmland and hills, and everyone was one, completely, _always_. For some strange reason, she felt as though she were stepping back onto familiar soil, despite never having been here at all.

"It's beautiful," she finally sighed with a tear closing in at the corner of her right eye. She brushed it away before Roux could see, but he knew by her shy gesture, that it had once been there. "Why did you want to bring me here though?"

With one arm tied around her waist, leading her further through the iron gates at the top of the hill overlooking the town, Roux led her into what appeared to be someone's property, abandoned by time but still just as lovely as the rest of the village. He said nothing as he walked her towards the front of the little cottage covered in vines and roses. He said nothing as he planted her firmly in the patches of wildflowers and sand that lined the open yard. He said nothing at all until she began to wiggle with curiosity, and only then did he rest his chin on her shoulder, hug her close to him and whisper all the truth she was dying to know.

"St. Remy de Provence is th' town where my mother was born, in 1952. This was th' house she was born in, where she grew up. An' it's the house I was born in, twenty-one years later, if ye can believe it." Isabelle was surprised at how easily they came this time, the tears, falling like mad from one eye at a time to the dusty ground under her boots. Roux sensed the emotion welling in her by the tremble of her body and he squeezed her that much tighter as he went on whispering. "My father was a Company Sergeant in th' Irish Army when he came t' France in the late sixties. He got stuck in the town over night travelling through t' the coast, met me mother at a pub in town, an' never looked back. He stationed himself here in St. Remy for life, became a season fisherman, an' loved me mother passionately until th' day she died."

With her throat closing in on her, she gulped away the last of the tears and wiped her face as she turned around in his arms, unable to stare at the house any longer without seeing him first. She clung to his shirt, lost in her weakness for a good love story, a good story told by Roux, no matter the subject matter. He wiped the staining wetness from her cheeks as she stared up at him, her eyes crystallized like the wet field under a summer afternoon sun.

"Did your father really know he loved your mother after only one night?"

Of all the questions he had expected, that had been the furthest from his mind. But nevertheless, it was better than all those he had conjured and it made him smile proudly as he responded, "He did, Izzie."

"Well, I guess he beat you by twenty-four hours then."

Consumed by her swiftness of tongue, he ran his hands throughout her tumbling mass of curls, pulling her face to his as laughed warmly against her mouth.

"Maybe he did, but it also took th' old bastard three months more t' propose marriage."

"So?"

Roux smirked from knowing too much, so much more than she ever could, and then took her hand in his as he led her back up the hillside for the road. When their boots hit pavement again, they lingered side by side as Isabelle followed him further away, this time in the opposite direction, further upwards to the sky as the sun sank in an orange cascade over the distant mountains. It drenched them in light, in the last bit of warmth for the day with smiles and laughter and all the good things that people searched forever for and most times never found. They'd found it in two and a half weeks, 17 short days. And by other counts, they'd found it in two days, and no more than 40 hours.

When the light of the day was all but gone and the only things that remained were the cooling blues and grays and purples of early evening, Roux tugged Isabelle off of the main road and down a slanted pathway to a hidden meadow. He wasted no time at all in falling into the high grass and bringing her right down with him. She laughed out as she rolled onto his chest, her long legs tangled with his and her hair soaking his senses as he breathed in the blend of honey and roses and countryside grasses. The softness of her body pressed to his was almost too much to bear at the moment, when he knew there were other things that needed to be said first, other things that needed to be thrown out, from him to her.

"Any idea in th' world as t' where we've ended up, love?"

At the question, Isabelle became suspicious all over again and she rose from his chest to sit cross- legged in the grass and stare out over the immaculate view of the town from a new angle. She stared at the colors in the sky, all of them deep and resounding, like the dark end of a perfect rainbow. The clouds and wind seemed to swirl together unnaturally, like nowhere she'd ever seen before. And as she examined the tops of buildings and the distant canopies of trees, she noticed that the stars in the sky began twinkling for her, one by one, taking their rightful turns. Caught up in all of this, it was no wonder that it took her an added moment or two to recognize the comfort she felt, the coziness of being drowned in those same two arms, the strong ones that never failed her.

"Well?"

"I'm thinking. I'm _thinking_," she snapped with a giggle.

"Right, _well_…" Roux yawned with a tease as he stretched back into the grass behind her, his eyes doused to the coming night. "Whenever you're done with th' thinking, I have something else t' ask o' ye."

She smirked and turned back to him briefly, "What? Didn't get enough attention in the cellar last night?"

Inside he was dying of laughter, but outside he was all seriousness; seriousness that got under her skin in only a matter of seconds. "It's not that at all, Isabelle." It was most likely the _Isabelle_ that caught her full attention from the clouds and the picture before her. She was drawn to him when he said her name so fully, so respectfully and so determinately like that. So she ignored the beauty of the night sky long enough to lay back and relax in the grass beside him, hoping for some sort of reasoning to his words. And it came, in ways she could have never planned for or expected in all her wildest, childish dreams.

"Let me see your hand a minute."

She eyed him in suspicion before lifting her hand over for him to examine from the ground up, plastered against the hazel sky.

"Are you a palm reader now too?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"What do ye think?"

She sighed, slightly perturbed by the continued oddity of his words. "Roux. You're confusing me. What is going on?"

And just then, when she attempted to sit up and face him, to hover over his twisted black eyes and find all the answers she wasn't getting other ways, she felt something that hadn't existed seconds before. Her hand, the one he'd requested, landed on his broad chest as he breathed steadily, staring up at her. But when she tried to move over top of him, something caught her eye where it struck the dipping moonlight with a single glint. That's when she looked down. Not at Roux, not into his eyes, but to the simple, glittering rock that sat perched on her slender finger. And that's also when she took her last breath.

"_Oh my_--"

Roux sat up quickly, catching her in his arms before she tumbled backwards down the hillside. He held her face warmly in his hands, counting the seconds it took before the first string of her teardrops sprinkled his skin. It wasn't long, ten seconds tops. Her eyelashes began to sparkle all over again, her body shook uncontrollably with the gasping and head shaking and oxygen deprivation, and he knew exactly what he was dealing with then, what sort of territory he'd entered for the first time in his whole life.

"Breathe, Izzie. Look at me," he lifted her face so he could see her eyes. "Don't look away from me. _Breathe_, darling."

She did, surprisingly so. She only ever seemed to follow directions if they were coming from him. And once she began to breathe again steadily, once she could clearly focus on the small diamond staring back at her from where her hand sat atop his shoulder, that's when the words she'd been waiting for finally came about and filled the cold air. "_Isabelle Marie Taylor_--" that was it, all she heard, all she could acknowledge and she hated herself for it. But the confusion welled so deep inside of her with fear and longing and above all else love, that she forced herself to find another concentration. And that focus became his very first question, of whether she knew where they were or not? She spent almost a minute doting on the truth, thinking about the night painted directly above her, with the milky swirls of clouds and illuminating yellow stars that seemed to take up most of the sky. It was somewhere on the tip of her tongue, but it refused to come free of her lips as easily as words seemed to be spilling from Roux's.

"…_I've loved every bit o' you since that first day ye fell into my arms. I looked down at you, I breathed you in once Izzie, an' I knew then, I had t' have ye for life_…"

Thirty seconds flew by in silence again, where the only sound was the thumping of her heart and the angered pump of blood through her veins as she trembled against Roux. Everything he was saying was going in one of her ears, stirring with all the other nonsensical things inside of her brain, resonating on only a subconscious level, and the disappearing into thin air. But the truth was there, right on his tongue, breathing upon her nose, and she loved him for that.

"…_It's not about time for me, love. When ye know, ye know. My father knew, right here he knew. An' I know now, right here with you. I am crazy in love with you__..._"

He brought her back to reality then and she looked wide-eyed up at him with a drawing smile.

"…_Marry me. Marry me an' fill up the rest o' my heart, Isabelle__. __Will you?_"

Her head was spinning with an answer, with the exact response, the one she knew she _had_ to give him. But when her lips slid across one another to form proper words, the only thing that came out was what even Roux couldn't have quite pictured. Isabelle blurted, "_Starry Night_—Van Gogh. This is where he painted it," making his brow twist with an awkward release of laughter as he sat waiting, wishing, and praying that her real response was coming.

"_Oh my God_," she gulped in embarrassment. "Roux, that's not what I—I didn't mean--"

He grinned wide, "What did ye mean then? Cause' I'm dying t' know here, Is."

"I meant--" she paused again, still lost in the truth of what she was about to say. But the confusion lingered and she knew there was only one way to put an end to it. That's when she crawled across the grass and into his lap where everything was always safe and right and real. She hugged Roux for all of ten seconds, feeding off of his body heat and the tobacco musk of his skin, and knowing instantly what needed to be said and done. So she kissed the bare skin on his chest where his shirt sat unbuttoned and whispered a tiny 'yes', followed by another kiss on his neck with a louder 'yes', then finally she brought her lips to his, brushed them once over to test his certainty in the matter and clearly stated a final, "_Yes_, absolutely I will," before stealing away his breath for the rest of the _starry night_.


	13. Elle et Lui

**Chapter 12: Elle et Lui **

_I love him. He's mine. I'm twenty-three and I love him crazy and I'm marrying him…_the words rolled around lazily inside of her head as Isabelle followed on Roux's heels in the dark, back down the hillside, back to that little cottage that he'd first shown her, his cottage.

_She said yes. She's wearing the ring. She's all mine and I'm never letting her go…_Roux chanted without stopping as he silently twisted his fingers with hers, aching to feel the cool silver band on hers, unknowingly turning her hand different ways so that he could watch the diamond sparkle under the moonlight as he brought her inside of the house.

He settled her in the middle of the first empty room in the dark and whispered on her ear, "I'll be right back." But when he attempted to slip away from her, Isabelle held his hand more tightly, not wanting to let go yet. She wasn't ready for that.

"Don't leave." Roux was all smiles as he turned back to her in the blue haze of the echoing old house, pulled into her arms with all the strength she could muster. "Don't go anywhere."

"Alright, I won't."

He fell to her will, all defenses dropped and all plans of running off to find candles and blankets diminished. Isabelle covered him without words, her hands roaming over each small button of his shirt, fixated on the smoothness of his chest where her burning fingers touched it. She kissed as skin was revealed to her in the moonlight pouring through the windows of the house, danced in his arms as she listened to the music of his breathing. Roux watched her as he held her, consumed by the sight of her face buried against his chest, leaving hidden kisses and touches where her wild mane of golden curls acted as a veil to it all. He had only to be surprised by every little thing she did same as he had been the night before in the cellar of the pub. He had only to give in to every last thing Isabelle was capable of doing to him without a single word.

It wasn't long though--once she pushed his blue shirt from his broad shoulders and found a new focus in the button on his loose pants—until Roux found the control enough to search out some sort of comfort to fall upon, since the dirty wood floor beneath their boots didn't look too inviting. There was a sheet draped over an old table in the corner of the dining room, and he pulled her towards it, breaking her concentration briefly to spread it out on the floor where seconds sooner than he had imagined, they ended up. Isabelle laughed like a child as she fell down into his arms, her legs spread far away and her heaving chest balancing on the warmth of his bared one.

"Not a bad spot, eh?"

She leaned down and kissed his chin, "There are no bad spots with you."

"Don't flatter a _flatterer_, love."

****ENTER WARNING****

Roux wrapped his arms around her then as they tumbled over to oppose the hovering in his control. And it was suddenly his turn to tauntingly unwind the satin buttons along the front of her dress, down to nearly her waist, allowing him to brush back the fabric and reveal each of her breasts, so perfectly shaped and fit to his hand under the moonlight. He started at the V-point of the exposure, where her navel invited him quietly, and slowly kissed his way up the plane of her smooth stomach, landing in the valley of her breasts and resting with peaceful eyes as he looked up to her and mumbled, "Wot' the hell kind o' fool let _you_ get away?"

Isabelle could only stare at him, acknowledging the truth welling in his face as he returned his lips to her aching skin, rounding over each of her breasts once before drawing the rosy bud of one between his teeth. She spared no moment in arching towards his floating form as her last real breath came and went with a smile. She used his arms for minimal leverage, her grinding boot heels on the wood floor for nothing but the reminding plea that they made to his ears. His tongue roamed over the soaring peak of her breast for what felt like eternity, making her shudder with each new biting wave of pleasure that he created. Then when she found her chance to stabilize and breathe properly, he shifted with a knowing wink of his black eye to her left breast and ruined her all over again, so that by the time he had sent her into the clouds, all that was left of the girl he loved to love was a melted mess of tangled yellow curls on the dusty floor.

"_Elle et lui_, she said…" he whispered into the cool air surrounding her head. "She and him. They are a pair, aren't they?" She looked up through starry eyes to question him without words, to find the meaning in his, and he delivered as he softly continued unbuttoning the white of her cotton dress. "I heard a little old French woman say that t' Danny at th' pub last night."

"Did you?"

Roux smirked with a nod as he pulled what was left of her dress away and showered in the beauty of her skin before him, bound in nothing but the thin blue lace of one final garment. He tugged each of her boots off and kicked his own away in the process, then came back to hover high above Isabelle's face, wanting to only drown in her eyes and bask in the heat that radiated off of her without touching. He needed to feel her like an ocean under his weight, spilling across the shore that was the floor of their assumed lovemaking.

And when he had felt it all and savored it to the last taste in the air, he carefully slid his hand down the surface of her chest, her stomach, where his fingers disappeared underneath the indigo lace hiding her from him completely. Isabelle gasped at the contact, but willingly allowed herself to sink with the roaming swirls of his fingertips over her heated, moistened folds as she whimpered on his lowering mouth. He touched her there countless times before, he felt that spot like no one ever had, re-discovered it in many ways, but now felt so different, as though it was a place he belonged, a place that was his own finally. And one bouncing gleam of that diamond as her hand landed in the puddle of her golden tresses was all the drive he needed. He broke down the barrier with mock force, sliding one finger into the wanting trenches of Isabelle's body as he kissed the cries on her lips away one by one.

"Roux—please, I _need_--"

"I know what ye need."

He kissed her clammy cheek as he drove a second finger inside of her, knowing it was the exact request refusing to come of her lips when she wrapped her arms more firmly around his neck and kissed him harshly. Her hips rolled to the ministrations of his hidden hand, her long legs tying to the backs of his knees as an anchor. And she had never known a freedom like the one he gave her, in the midst of a promise that sparkled on her right hand. The crashing surge that rushed over her was inviting and needed more than she realized as his name left her lips in a flurry of repetition. It was all he knew for minutes, was his own name, until he brought his fingers from her and tasted the juice that only remained as Isabelle watched him through heavy eyes.

"Where to next…?"

His amused grin made her giggle in leftover pleasure as she reached out to stroke his rough chin and jaw. He was hardened in the dark light of the country, in ways that he wasn't in the haze of the city's brightness. In Paris there was always a light shining somewhere, no matter the curtains drawn or sheets to hide beneath. But here in this place, moonlight ruled as the primary source of radiance, and it suited him so well that she fell in love with him all over again.

"Don't be gentle tonight," she whispered in a way that caught his curious attention. She continued to touch his rugged face, fingertips outlining his brazen midnight eyes. "No more romancing, Roux. Just have me, the way I know you want me. Take me where you've never taken anyone before."

"An' where might that be, dear Izzie?"

Under a bow of suggestive, dangerous chocolate eyes, all she said was, "_You know where_," and he needed no more input for the evening in the matter. He needed no more guessing with Isabelle Taylor. He'd officially seen every layer peeled from her soft, southern mold. He saw deep into the corners that had been forgotten, to where things were dark and shameless and brutal. And because he wasn't sure when he'd ever see it again, he wrapped his arms around her with mock genteel and ran his fingers throughout her yellow hair with a piercing tug of ecstasy. Then he tore himself from the confines of his own layers and crushed her legs open with a brash sensitivity to her begging core, taking advantage of the one thing in life he still could.

"Let me have you," she mumbled helplessly on his mouth as she cut into him with her shining eyes. "Roux. Let me _have_—AH!"

He broke her train of thought, of pleading, with one swift thrust of his body inside of hers, locking her to him for all eternity, ripe and raw and crudely delicious. Nothing was more conscious an experience than when he took her that way. He had her, all of her, without the further delicacies or impressions made. There was no need. There was only room for hazardous screams and slicing pink fingernails in his back and a biting rage of his mouth upon her neck as his body slithered up and down hers. The tug of her hand on the hair at the nape of his neck was the unspoken rein to his movement, guiding the intensity as she cried for it, and softening the grind when Isabelle's body trembled with a most wanted pain.

"_Izzie_," he grunted low in her ear, needing only more of her, something even more perilous out of their frolicking. He held her hips tightly as he shifted her tender weight in his hands, whispering, "Come 'ere—turn over, love." And in a short lived uncertainty of what was to come, Isabelle did as she was told, as always was her weakness to the dripping lure in his voice. And he'd done as she had asked the same and ignored all pretenses of want and need, tossing the romance aside for something far more necessary. The sounds and smells and tastes of the impossible, of uninhibited lovemaking.

His hand roamed the softness of her back as he turned her over, face down in the cusp of his second hand for protection. He felt the ridges of her spine under the honey skin she was covered in, and with no words needing to be said, he rose her hips back, gripping the inside of her right thigh as he found the warmth lingering below that he was after. Isabelle moaned into his palm as she bit her lip and felt the force of him, all of Roux, driving quickly back inside of her wet folds. The only leverage she found was in his arm where it wrapped under and around her to form the pillow that broke her every fall with his every immediate thrust. Her lips dried and her throat ached to scream, but she couldn't, she had used up all of her energy and could now only watch blindly from the back corner of her eye as Roux's body moved through hers, touching places that other men had only ever dreamed to. The pain was mixed with the bliss radiating through her bones and muscles and finally stopping at the open thumping of her heart.

"My God, Isabelle." His hand on the inside of her thigh caressed even further beneath her weight against the floor, reaching out for the space where their heated flesh joined, where she leaked slowly of the sweetest scent. He rubbed her sensitively as he plunged thicker and faster and harder into the middle of their tangled web. "I love you," he chanted over and over again against the nape of her neck, breathing the words down her back. "I love you, Is—_I love you_."

Before she could return the gesture though, or find the breath to even speak his name lovingly in response, everything seemed to tumble together into a brightness that fizzled across both of their eyes at the same moment, one that drowned them in sweat and tired release. Isabelle felt herself devoured and filled as equally with his warm seed as she had delivered to him, and rolled from the intense pleasure with his strong arms waiting to catch her. It was breathing and the cold moon from outside of the window that consumed them, while Roux hugged her body deep within his caress, aching just from the scent that lingered in her hair of what they'd accomplished. And when he couldn't contain the silence any longer, when he knew he had to hear her laugh just to set the planets back in orbit again, he leaned over her shoulder to see her eyes sparkling in the night.

****END WARNING****

"Rough enough for ye then?"

Isabelle breathed a laugh as she turned over in his arms to see his black eyes the same.

"You're still the best I've ever had. I knew you had it in you."

"I did too," he mused with a kiss on the curve of her nose. "I just didn't know you did, darling."

"Don't underestimate me."

"_Oh love_," he brought her back against his body, her face pressed lovingly to his chest as he felt her eyelashes flutter closed on his skin. "No more. You 'ave me word."


	14. What Goes Around

**Chapter 13: What Goes Around**

It took Isabelle and Roux until mid-afternoon the next day to even contemplate moving from their shared space on the floor of the tiny cottage in St. Remy. The sun poured inside, the emptiness seemed to be filled by their passion and the day's warmth, but still they rolled back and forth in each other's arms on that singular sheet on that dusty floor. Only when Isabelle mentioned the idea of missing the last train out of town at 2 o'clock, did Roux hurry to get dressed and pull her back up the street for a taxi, drowned in her giggles the entire way.

They arrived in Paris by train at almost seven, and in their same disheveled, wrinkled clothes from the arduous journey south, they hurried to O'Sullivans between intervals of rapturous kissing against alley walls and closed shop doorways. When they made it to the pub, Danny and Conner were setting up new microphones on the stage, and they greeted Isabelle and Roux with knowing grins.

"Ave' a nice little trip then did ye? See th' whole o' the _countryside_, Blondie?"

Her mouth gaped with humor at Connor's wink and she hugged Roux tighter for emphasis as she replied, "Every_ last_ blade of grass and flower in between."

He nodded with a 'Touché' as Danny interrupted with business.

"Roux mate, I need ye t' have a look at the power breaker before th' crowd. It's been acting off today. I'm worried 'bout the lights an' all."

"What's wrong with it?"

"If I knew that would I be asking ye?"

Isabelle laughed as Roux rolled his eyes and kissed the top of her head before following Danny away for the basement door behind the bar. She turned her attention to Connor for all of a second, bound to help him with the wiring of the microphones, when she saw something storming towards her again from the corner of her eye. It was Roux. He had hardly made it through the door to the basement when he'd glanced back and seen her standing in her well worn, white cotton dress, hair a tangled mess of what he'd put her through since the night before, and her lips still just as strawberry fresh. It burned him, being away from her for even half a second and he rushed back in a desperate flee to the middle of the pub, tripping over tables and wires to get to her.

"Roux, what are you--?"

Her voice froze when he crushed her lips with his and lifted her clear from ground, her boots dangling somewhere below as she wrapped her arms around his neck and warmed to the kiss. Connor shook his head and laughed as Danny shouted angrily from the basement doorway. Roux heard none of it though. He was determined to fill his lungs with her scent and her taste and her breath until he had enough of it to survive off of when he turned and left her again. He hated that part, even for a minute, when she was out of his sight and clear of his arms embrace. It was like a piece of him was missing.

"Damn it Roux, come on man! I don't 'ave all night."

With one last slide of Isabelle's lips from his, releasing her to the safety of the floor, she giggled against his mouth and whispered, "You better go help him."

"No."

His infantile pout made her heart swoon and she planted one last kiss on his lips before she shooed him away for the door. And maybe if she had known what that one kiss would be in the coming scheme of things, in what was about to fall to pieces, she might have made it a longer one. She might have held onto him a little tighter or touched his lips a little deeper. She might have made it more memorable a thing to behold forever.

Instead she turned back with an unknowing glow in her smile as she finished helping Connor to rework the electrical system of the stage. When they were done, he patted her cheek gratefully and darted back upstairs to get changed for his set. Isabelle walked to the bar and sat down, doodling carelessly on napkins as she waited for Roux, and more importantly, the crowds that were bound to show in minutes or less. She was so fixed on the trailing end of the black pen in fact, that she at first missed the presence of Fiona behind the bar, aimlessly pretending to clean glasses and restock bottles of liquor. Not until the scent of French perfume drifted underneath her nose, did Isabelle realize the company that watched over her so intently. She looked up to see Fiona then, her clover eyes shadowed with black dust and her lips a brazen, sinister shade of crimson to made her fiery tendrils. She was beautiful, Isabelle had always known as much and respected Fiona for being classy about her looks, even though she knew that Fiona thought far less of her in return.

"Isabelle," she stated with a rising curiosity in her voice as she slid closer down the bar to where she sat still sketching. "Back from th' excursion cross country, eh?"

"Yes."

"An' how was it?"

As she finished shading in a small black star on the napkin, she glanced up to Fiona's Cheshire green eyes and smiled kindly. "It was very nice. St. Remy is beautiful."

"St. Remy is where e' took ye?"

She nodded hesitantly and grabbed a fresh napkin as Fiona poured two small glasses of Irish rum, placing one down on the bar top in front of Isabelle.

"Things must be even more serious than I thought o' you two then."

"Maybe so, Fiona. But I don't want to make you feel--"

Isabelle was genuine in her modesty, trying to spare Fiona's feelings before Fiona herself did with a wide grin that interrupted her thoughts, "Not to worry 'bout me, _Izzie_." The nickname didn't sound half as believable when she said it as it did coming from Roux's lips, but she accepted all the same. "I would only worry 'bout yourself now."

"About myself?"

"Aye," she took a smart sip of her drink with a pucker of her devilish lips. "Roux's a fast mover, a very fast lover. But worse than that, he's known t' have changes of heart at th' drop o' a hat."

"I don't understand."

"I'm not surprised, you're caught up in him, in his charm. It's easily done, trust me this. But it's short-lived. Once e' has his fill, he'll find another t' replace you Isabelle."

Her heart stopped beating for a moment as she contemplated the words spilling from Fiona's mouth. She couldn't let herself believe a jealous women and better yet, a woman who was after the man she herself loved, the man who had given her the ring that sat sparkling under the lights of the pub, directly before Fiona.

"Roux has no reason to replace me, Fiona. He's asked me to marry him. _See_." She held her hand up to the light as Fiona studied the gem she had already caught sight of. Her eyes were fierce upon the stone, the one she knew was his mother's, the one she'd always had her own heart set on. "Roux loves me and he'd never do anything to hurt me."

"How do ye know that?"

"I know Roux."

"After only wot'—two weeks?"

Isabelle sighed as she wiped the condensation from her glass. "Yes. Two weeks. That's all I need to know."

"Very well then," Fiona shot back slyly as she turned to step away from the bar. And Isabelle almost felt as though she were in the clear of the questioning, when the smooth tongued red-head shifted back on the heels of her red stilettos and whispered a final remark. "I guess me telling you that he's going t' father a child that isn't _yours_, wouldn't make a difference either then?"

No words came, no thoughts or sounds or reality. There was only the dryness in Isabelle's throat as she gulped away the uncertainty of Fiona's statement and tried to ward off the evil that lured in her eyes as she came back to lean on the bar before her.

"I haven't told him yet. I only just found out today meself." Utter silence and anger and confusion boiled deep in Isabelle's gut as she felt tears burning at the corners of her eyes. "He's a wonderful man, don't think e' isn't. But Roux's heart knows no boundaries, Isabelle. He is not stable in love, never as' been. I wouldn't wish on you what's become o' my nights spent with him. You're very young, an' if you're as smart as e' lets on you are, you won't stay just so e' can break your heart too."

A shallow breath came from Isabelle's lips as she stuttered, "How can I even believe you?"

"You don't ave' to. It will only be a matter o' time before the truth comes 'bout and then you'll leave anyway, all over again. Wot' goes around must always come back 'round, wouldn't ye agree?" She breathed with flaming breath over Isabelle's hands where they rested, stained with teardrops. "So why not save yourself th' trouble this time, _Miss Taylor_, an' get a running start on him?"


	15. I Told You So

**Chapter 14: I Told You So**

"Jammed, s'all. It's fine now, lights should be good t' go."

"Don't know what I'd do without ye mate," Danny pounded Roux on the back as he slammed the circuit door shut, and the two of them hurried back up the dimly lit stairs of the basement for the bar they could hear already full of people. It was just as suspected when they arrived to the twinkling, cascading lights again and were greeted by hounds of friends and the same old faithful listeners. A half dozen young girls found themselves in the midst of Roux and tried to cling to him for old time's sake, but he was only interested in one girl, one smiling face in the crowd.

He looked around for what felt like eternity, from the stage to the tables and back to the bar, never coming across his Izzie, never seeing her billow of dusty curls or her smooth skin that still burned of his love for her. When Connor crossed his path, he stopped him abruptly, "Ye seen Izzie 'round?"

"Nah buddy, she was at th' bar last I saw her."

"Alright," he nodded as he turned from his friend to take a seat on one of the barstools, again finding himself at the center of attention as swarms of chatting people formed around him, locking him in. So he spun away to come face to face with an abandoned glass of rum with a faint strawberry gloss stain on it. He lifted it to his nose and breathed deep, basking in Isabelle's lingering scent, then pressed his mouth to the rim of the glass and finished off the warm alcohol inside. Beneath his arm he saw a mess of napkins, all of them doodled on, with stars and hearts and one that had a childish sketch of a fishing boat, one he knew all too well. He smiled and examined the napkin, interrupted only a moment later by the sound of a bottle touching the rim of the glass in front of him again.

Fiona was filling it for him, silently.

"Izzie was here, did ye see where she went off to?"

He could tell by her passive breathing and the way she ignored his question that she was still upset with him, two weeks after the fact. Roux was sorry and he'd apologized to her a dozen times since, but she seemed to be too lost in midst of her own emotions to accept it. So ever the gentleman, he tried one more time.

"Fiona. I know ye don't care for her, or me at th' moment an' I'm sorry. I am, ye know I am. But can ye just tell me if you saw her?"

"I saw her," she replied quietly, her green eyes foretelling. "An' I warned you."

He sighed and held his forehead in his hand, "Not this again. Where is she, upstairs?"

"No. She's not upstairs, an' she's not powdering 'er nose for you."

"Then where did she--?"

"She's gone," Fiona spat at him, trying to hide her further knowledge in the case. "She left, just like I knew she would. Your_ Isabelle_ doesn't want you, Roux. She doesn't love you."

His hands were sharp on the edge of the bar as he rose from the stool and pushed his way through the thickening crowd to get to the door of the pub. A million people tried to stop him, to talk to him, to ask him where his better half was, but he didn't know what to say or how to even tell himself. All he knew to do was run into the black streets of Paris, to hurdle his way down six blocks to the _Hotel Saint Louis_, never minding to stop for other strolling patrons or passing cars in the roads. He was breathless halfway there, but refused to pause, to relax for a single moment. He ran until there was nowhere left to run expect up the steps of the dirtied old building, down the wasted halls of times past and to the room where he could feel her still. He pounded on the door with what was left of his energy, shouting.

"Isabelle! Izzie, it's me! Open up!"

A few angered sleepers came from their rooms and shouted at him, but he ignored it and continued banging on the door, shouting, until it slipped free of the hinge and slowly flew back, opening him to the scene he'd hoped could never exist. The room was dark and cold, lifeless but not from being unused the night before. It was abandoned by its guest, drawers hanging wide from the dresser, empty and haunting, the sheets strewn about as though the act of fleeing had been a fast one, even faster than his own feet carrying him. It was unbearable as he walked through the hazy space and leaned against the large pane glass window overlooking the square of _Rue St. Antoine_. It was as empty and frigid as where he stood, the glass of the window iced with an earlier rain shower that mocked his heart now.

"Damn it, Izzie—_why_?"

The answer was closer than he knew, waiting for him on top of the chest at the end of the bed, and only when he turned to leave, after minutes of wiping the tears from his cheeks, did he see the sparkle of something that had been left behind on purpose. Sitting, tied to a small silver chain, was the ring he'd put on her finger the night before, the ring that he'd never gotten a chance to tell her was his mother's engagement ring from his father, the most important thing he owned in this life. Roux lifted it as he felt one last tear trickling from the seam of his right eye, and let it dangle off of his finger a moment when he noticed too, the napkin beneath it that had been left with one final note of affection.

**I told you so.**

It burned him, those words, whatever they meant to say, whatever he would be left to wonder about forever, now that she had left him without a single trace to her beautiful name. Thinking of only one last thing, Roux lifted his hand where the necklace and ring dangled, towards his mouth, touching his fingertips to the warmth of his lips where he still felt her last touch, that raw, wanting mouth of hers, of his American girl gone.


	16. Famous in a Small Town

**Chapter 15: Famous in a Small Town**

**Paris, ****Tennessee **

One hearty cash in at the airport terminal in France, a jagged, ten hour tour across the Atlantic, and a purse of used Kleenex later, had brought Isabelle right back to home base, right back to where she feared she'd always belong. She hadn't wanted to, but needing a ride and a safe haven from all her darkest thoughts of bridge jumping and whiskey suicide, had made her call him, the bane of all loving existence to have ever come into her life.

"Hello?"

She breathed in deep, fooled with her messy, jet-streamed curls and sighed in exhalation.

"Hello? Who is this?"

"Dirk, it's me."

Something in his voice changed. Something softened with immediacy, even though she could tell he'd been drinking, undoubtedly without restraint since she'd gone.

"Isabelle? _Isa-boo_, is that really you baby?"

She hated that nickname. "It's me."

"Oh my Christ," his tired southern twang scraped at the still open wounds of her heart. "You just disappeared—you—_Jesus_. Where are you?"

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling of the stateside terminal, tapped her pink fingernails on the phone booth and wished she'd thought this all over. But it was too late now. She was home.

"I'm in Nashville, at the airport." With a disheartening kick of her boot against the wall, she bit her lip and concluded, "Come get me, Dirk."

And he had, in record breaking time. She was waiting outside in the dark night, under a flickering streetlamp that every mosquito from there to Kentucky seemed to be drawn to, when he had stormed to the curb in his old blue Chevy Nova. Seeing it made her remember the day she had first left for somewhere unknown, the afternoon she had ditched her own truck with the keys in the ignition a mile from the airport. She wondered only briefly, for the first time since she'd stepped on the plane for France, what fortunate person had found it.

"Babe--" he shouted as he ran in front of the headlights to the bench where she sat. Isabelle was hesitant to stand, a lagging guitar case and suitcase in her hands. And as he approached in the shadows, his eyes lit up with an oddly unspoken promise, she knew exactly why she was nervous. It was him, all over again, and she was actually letting herself go back. All the talk in France about freedom and personal choices and living life the way she dreamed to, the way Roux wanted her to with him, was gone. It was all torn down from the stars and settling in dust at her boot heels as Dirk pulled her into his arms, forcing his rough mechanic's lips against hers. That was that, the end to her little quixotic adventure.

"I missed you so much. I love you, honey."

His passionate whispers in the cab of the truck did nothing in comparison to the memories that flew through her head of a tiny blackened room on a boat, the sandy banks of the Seine, meadows in the south of France, or even that cellar at O'Sullivans. But this was reality. This was Tennessee, her home, and the only place that seemed to have an even grounding. Here, she knew what to expect of people. She knew upfront that Dirk was an asshole of a man, that he was going to take her home and grunt and heave his way to some short-lived reunion release that she would never match. She knew that he would eventually try to hit her again and she would falter under the strength of his 'once-was' first-string throwing arm. Isabelle knew not to expect romance and an audience to fall in love with her bemusing voice. And most importantly of all, she knew not to expect trust here. That meant that in return, she was well prepared to expect all the disappointment she could possibly ask for.

She was ahead of her game in _her _Paris at least. There were no red-lipped, clover-eyed Irish goddesses to put her in her place, to settle scores with ultrasounds, or to remind her of the nature of men in this world, every man, no matter the charm in their eyes or the heavenly musk lingering in their sheets.

* * *

**3 days later****- - ****Miss Kitty's Bar**

"Paris,_ France_. The _real_ one, you're kidding?"

Dirk shook his head with a wild laugh, a throw back of his beer and a squeeze of Isabelle's waist where she sat uncomfortably pretending to be in his arms for good again.

"Tell 'em, baby doll."

He toyed with her long golden curls in the low light of the saloon, as her eyes were moving between the familiar faces and grinding bodies on a regular Friday night in town. She sighed and turned back to the conversation with a forced smile, an innocence wandering in her eyes as she eased into Dirk's touch.

"It was nice." She didn't know what else to say.

"Tell 'em what you told me, about the Eiffel Tower."

"Oh," she acted to be a part of their excitement, drumming her nails on the small table top with a grin. "It's big, much bigger than ours is. And there's a restaurant at the top."

"Now you're just fibbing," her childhood friend Leslie mocked. "How could they ever get such a thing that high up?"

Isabelle shrugged in annoyance at the ignorance of this place, the people she hated to be around all over again. She missed the optimistic wisdom of her temporary Irish family of drunken, jaunting band members. She missed the sweetened French couples who came to hear her play and sing, the ones that spoke in a culturally sound tone. She missed the people that made her laugh without trying to be funny and the faces that welcomed her without ever needing to.

Then she felt a knowing touch on her neck, a sloppy mess of a kiss that left her shuddering from the want of more, something tender and breathless and Irish.

"Why don't you sing us a song, baby?"

"No."

"Yeah Isabelle," Leslie jumped in again, her arms wrapped around her conquest for the night; Matt, the town's leaching farm-boy. "Your voice is prettier than that stupid old jukebox. Go on up there."

"I really don't want to--"

"Nonsense," Dirk cut in as he picked her up from her chair and carried her in a taunting sweep to the small stage at the middle of the bar. She landed on her boots in front of the microphone, her sundress swaying at her knees awkwardly, angrily. "Sing me a love song, Goldilocks."

She hated when he called her that. It wasn't the same as hearing _Izzie, _or for that matter, the genuine promise of _darling, Love. _It would never be the same. And in spite of it, she did sing that night. She pulled a nearby guitar from one of the stands, then strummed a leading solo to her heart's content as Dirk tapped his boots from his nearby seat and whistled. She stood in front of the microphone, under the heady neon Budweiser signs that burned her skin, wishing she could have twinkling lights that reflected on rainy windows and a dabbling of piano keys at a close distance. She wished she could feel a breathy whisper on her neck of, '_You're my La Vie en Rose' _and watch a rowdy mess of European artisans chanting of her praises mid-song.

What she got though, as she fell to the first cover verse of Garth Brook's _Friends in Low Places_, was unattractively drunken cowboys and their hopelessly trashy dates dancing across a beer sloshed wooden floor. She got a brawling fight in the middle of her speculative, ironic chorus. She got crashing glass and conservative, southern eyes and something that resembled a kiss puckering at her boyfriend's lips, a faux reminder of what he wanted from her when they got home, what he would get with no exceptions.

The only thing Isabelle couldn't see, was the shadowed figure hanging at the doorway of Miss Kitty's, smoking a cigarette and placing a call to her office back in Nashville. She completely missed the voice of the woman who said, "Hunter. You'll never believe what I just found."


	17. Friends in Good Places

**Chapter 16: Friends in Good Places**

**Paris****, ****France **

He could have chased her.

He could have jumped on his boat, hauled anchor and stormed down the Seine headed out of the country and away from the haunting memories Isabelle had left. He could have sailed from there to the east coast of America on a promising sort of wind. He could have docked in a place called Surf City, North Carolina, bummed a car off of the first available person to fall for his romantic story, drive cross state to the Tennessee border and keep going until he saw the limits of that town she swore was a joke, that other Paris.

Damn it, he could have done it.

But then there was the swearing shake of Fiona's head the next morning, when she told him over and over that Isabelle had left on purpose, to leave him. There was the regretful light in her eyes when she warned him that his American girl had gone home on the basis of fear alone, of misinterpreting her freedom and her will power. There was that wiry way she smiled when she whispered from across the bar, handing him his sixth beer, "She just wasn't th' one, Roux. Ye have t' let the girl go."

"Just like that--"

Fiona nodded and leaned on her tiny freckled hand, her green eyes prompting him. He still wasn't sure whether to trust her, not with how she'd reacted to Isabelle since day one. But he couldn't imagine that his friend, the woman he'd known forever in this place, could say anything to remotely make Izzie run away from his promise, his offer to spend the rest of their lives together. Even that was too heavy for Fiona to destroy with jealousy. _Wasn't it?_

"I know ye loved her an' I'm sorry for trying to break that before. I am."

He looked into her shockingly approaching eyes over the bar, sipping at his beer.

"But I tried t' tell you. Americans can't be trusted. They don't know wot' they want. Even when they think they know…"

He listened and believed her for some reason, one that he supposed he probably shouldn't have. But Fiona, unlike the guys who had tried to console him through the night, had her own experience with an American to speak of. She'd been left high and dry in the middle of Rome the summer of her twenty second birthday. And she had loved him, that American man. Maybe he should have been more intent on her message before, when Isabelle was still there in his arms.

"She took the ring. She said 'yes', that I don't get."

"Ye probably never will."

He sighed with one last sip of his beer, a sip that somehow re-inspired his disheartened mind, his disheveled mold, his broken spirit that radiated from the burn in his eyes and the rugged grip on the glass.

"I could still chase after er'."

Fiona stiffened, not wanting her ploy destroyed by his expected heroism. It was Roux after all. He would have chased a girl to the ends of the Earth if he thought hope still existed.

"It's not worth it."

"Why?"

It was all she could do to keep up her game, to convince him with a smile and a pat on the back of his clenched hand. "Don't let her disappoint ye twice, love. As me mother always said, 'Walk on, head high an' heart open.'"

He didn't bother telling her he thought it was bullshit.

* * *

**Ten months later**** - - ****O'Sullivans**

The bullshit found a comfortable niche in Roux though. He came to accept that without a word from Isabelle, and with the meaning of her last napkin note shadowed by confusion and anger and worst of all resentment, that he wasn't running after her. He came to realize that she must have left for a reason, left him for an even better one, and that perhaps the idea of his love and his sworn promises and all of her newfound freedom had gotten the best of her. He came to tell himself nightly, months after of course, as he began to turn into Fiona's sheets following every set at the bar, that Isabelle had been a passing muse in his life, one that would most likely always remain in his heart but never again in his hands.

For convincing his head of this, he kicked himself endlessly. Then he would sleep with Fiona again and kick himself even harder for that.

It was that afternoon, as he gripped a fistful of her sinful red locks, pushing his body to the limit of all known existence, thrusting long and hard to a place that wasn't half as warm as other golden fields he could imagine; that he realized what a failure he really was. He was a pitiful excuse for a man in love, still. He had another woman, a wanting woman, turned with her cheek pressed to the wall of the room upstairs, saving himself from seeing her face. He could pretend she was his Isabelle this way, pretend that Izzie had died her hair red, or was wearing a wig to tease him. He could pretend that it was her warm body he was holding to his stone hard need, pounding into the stucco, breathing in at the neck.

"Roux, _please_--do it--" she moaned in her sleek way, reminding him that she was the Irish girl he'd known since his adolescence.

It was enough to make him go limp in his movement, enough to bring him tumbling from the height he'd built up in his mind, the one where he was lying in a field with his coral-toed American doll. He heard Fiona shouting his name, begging him to go on with what they'd started, pleading with him to finish the job. But all he could do was slump with a slack release of her hair from his sweating palm, pull from her body and roll against the wall to his back, heaving as he desperately tried to see Isabelle behind his lying eyes. He was lying to himself, over and over and over again.

"Wot' is it now? Wot' the hell did I do t' ye now?"

"Nothing," he whispered in a husky fall to the floor, nude and angry.

Fiona scowled down at him and threw herself to the bed.

"I told you t' stop this, Roux."

He ignored her a moment longer as he wiped the sweat from his bristly brow.

"She's not coming back. An' I'm never going t' be blonde."

"I'm not asking ye t' be."

"Good," she spat, dressing. "Maybe you'll change your mind t'night then."

He rubbed at his temple, stressed by only the thoughts that continued to plague him, the memory of honey soft skin, of a red peasant dress thrown to the salty floor of his boat, of golden curls spilled across his burning chest, in his eyes, upon his dried lips. It was all so fresh, so renewed with every sunrise and sunset. She never went away, no matter what he did to refuel his heart and move on, to convince him that Fiona was beautiful and worthy and something right.

She stormed out of the room, down the stairs for the bar with the door hanging wide open, leaving him to feign modesty when he heard Danny and Conner shouting out for him from the pub below. He threw on his jeans and t-shirt, trampled down the old steps barefoot and ruffled his messy hair as he fell to a stool beside Danny.

"Do tell a brother how much ye love him."

He was motioning to himself as Roux looked on in humored confusion.

"Wot' for?"

"I have a little gift for ye, mate."

With a twisted brow, he shifted gazes between Danny and Connor, who was laughing under his breath as he grabbed a beer from behind the bar, then to Fiona, who gave him a mock look of satisfaction from before.

"Feast yer eyes upon th' answer t' your dreams…"

It was a mere second that passed, between the turn of his eyes from the emerald sparkle in Fiona's, to the sweeping movement of something in Danny's hand, then to the smack of that something hitting the bar top in front of him, a magazine cover. And yes, it could have been anything at all. It could have been an article on painting or boating or music. It could have been a story about Ireland or about some world event that somehow connected to his life. And perhaps the latter of all those options was the closest he could conjure, a world event, a world _phenomenon_ rather.

"Well, wot' says ye about signs in th' stars now, buddy?"

He was registering it all when the question came. He smiled at the question, was grateful for its purpose. Roux's right hand carefully stroked the shiny paper of the periodical cover, the July issue of _Rolling Stone. _He pretended it was real, the image burning a hole in his fingertips, the hair and eyes and lips and honeyed breasts that made his eyes wander in circles, ignoring the company surrounding him.

"Blondie made it, can ye believe it?"

Roux completely missed the slamming of the door as Fiona erupted from the bar. He missed the chuckling overhead from Danny and Connor, or their dropped hints of getting in touch with the editor of the magazine, of finding his American girl once and for all. What he didn't miss, was the name of the article's chosen author.

He knew then he didn't need an editor. He had friends in higher, better places than that.

* * *

**Mills River, ****North Carolina ****- - ****4 AM **

It was warm and it was peaceful where she was lost in sleep, lost in the comfort of two stationary arms. Roxanne had spent a weekend in Charleston writing a piece for a bed and breakfast to the stars, to the ones that she already represented with her thoughtful articles for the _Stone_. She was exhausted to say the least, and completely unsuspecting to say the most.

A ring startled her awake with a moan into the pillow. Mort's arm around her tightened, as he growled at the incessant sound in the dark and tried to prevent her from sliding through the bed to answer it.

"Don't--"

She yawned with a laugh at his pleading voice and reached for the phone. In a tired grumble she said, "Hello?"

"_Roxy…"_

She sat up suddenly, rubbing her eyes with shock. "Roux, is that you?"

Mort eyed her in exhaustion, hugging her waist as he fell back to sleep.

"_It's me, love. Damn. I woke ye didn't I? The time thing--"_

"It's alright," she whispered as she slid from her husband's limp arm and the bed, heading out with a creak of the bedroom door, down the hall and to kitchen. "Is something the matter?"

"_No no," _he swore in her ear with the sweet Irish murmur she loved to hear, more so at a reasonable hour though. Roxanne smiled the same despite it, flicking on the switch over the stove and finding a comfortable chair at the kitchen island. _"I wanted t' call, well no, I needed t' call and ask ye something. But you should go back to sleep. Call me tomorrow."_

"Roux," she sighed with a giggle, running her finger through a leftover trail of salt on the countertop. "I'm awake and here if you need me. Ask me anything."

Through the receiver she heard a nervous breath, a tap of fingers and then his voice again.

"_I read your article in th' magazine this month. Got a copy just today."_

With a wispy smile she replied, "French _Rolling Stone_?"

"_Yeah, it was great. But wot' else is new eh?"_

Roxanne laughed modestly.

"_Th' girl ye wrote about though…"_

"Isabelle Taylor."

"_Yeah, her--"_

"She's great isn't she?"

Another anxious breath came from his end, thousands of miles away.

"_You know th' letter I wrote t' ye? About th' girl I met?"_

"Of course I do. She was an American girl wasn't she? Her name was Iz--"

The line went completely quiet, suddenly, as Roxanne choked on her own breath. Her palm grew sweaty on the marble counter and her knee trembled with the thoughts of the girl, the one she'd adored the second she sat down with her at the Ritz Carlton in New York. She remembered the way she had smiled politely and spoken with a soft twang of the woods she'd come from, and she remembered how there was a lingering sadness of love lost in her eyes, something Roxanne herself knew the look of well.

"_Roxanne?"_

"That was your _Izzie_," she muttered with a teary grin spreading on her face. "She's the one."

She couldn't see it, but from another continent, across the Atlantic, he was smiling like wildfire was aflame on his lips.

"_Think ye can help me?"_

She leapt from the stool, her heart pattering and her spirit lifted in some small way.

"You don't even have to ask. I still owe you one."


	18. American Baby

**Chapter 17: American Baby**

**Las Vegas****, ****Nevada**

Maybe it was the bright lights. Maybe it was the twenty-thousand depth trench in front of her. Maybe it was the small reminder clicking in the back of her mind that those seats would all be filled in four hours. Maybe it was the nervous twitch of her old boots. Maybe it was the shake in her hand and the flutter of her heart and the sound of a band, her band, tuning up somewhere in the background. Maybe it was all of this that made Isabelle smile with a tiny bite of her lip.

"We'll need to do a run through real quick. Sound check."

She nodded but wasn't focused. Her head was somewhere else entirely.

"Izzie, here's your guitar."

She acknowledged that her assistant Meg was handing her the bedazzled, signature instrument. She understood that it was in her hands, being strummed. But she was on another part of the planet altogether.

"Ready up there, Is?"

She twisted back then, a heavenly bounce in her golden curls and a glow in her coffee eyes. She stepped behind the microphone and whispered a soft, 'ready' to her band. She breathed deep and shut her eyes as she began to sing. But when she opened them again and exhaled, she wasn't in Las Vegas, she wasn't on her first tour of the States, and she wasn't standing in an opened arena, looking out on her new life. She was in a small pub in the middle of Paris, singing next to him for a crowd of forty, at best.

_Elle et Lui, _she and him always.

* * *

**MGM Grand**** - - ****2 hours later**

To say he was out of his league was an understatement. Better or worse than that, he was out of focus, out of interest save for one single topic, the one that stared him boldly, blankly in the face as he shifted from the taxi, onto the pavilion of the hotel's lobby. The poster was twice the size of the one in the airport and tripled the size of the advertisements on the buses through the city. It was glowing, illuminated by theatrical bulbs in a gold casing, intimidating and yet at the same time, awe-inspiring, beautiful.

Roux wandered inside of the whooshing doors of the hotel, through the madness of the lobby, underneath the fiery chandeliers and across the reflecting tile floor towards the check-in desk. He dropped his single bag, frayed with age and much different forms of travel, onto the floor at his boots as he acknowledged the overly anxious woman.

"Good afternoon, sir. Checking in today?"

"Yes," he smiled with a twitch in his hand as he got lost in the mesmerizing video playing on the screens behind her head. The advertisement was of a yellow-haired girl with her guitar. It was simplicity. It was bewilderment. It was the single most important thing—

"Sir?"

The interruption came and he travelled back from the stars with an apologetic grin.

"Sorry. It should be under Michel Roux. I'm with th' Rolling Stone--"

"Yes." She stopped him with that same freakish beam as she typed nonsensically away on the keys of a computer. "We've been expecting you."

In surprising relief he sighed, thinking only one thing. _Touché, Roxy Love._

* * *

**Backstage Garden Arena**** - - ****Another 2 hours later**

For a small moment in an even smaller minute, Isabelle felt like herself, the small town, knobby kneed girl she used to be. She sat wound in a pair of worn Levi's, her bare toes kicked up on the makeup counter in front of a long mirror, lighted and fully reflecting the hundreds of flowers that had been sent to her throughout the afternoon, from male celebrity admirers mostly. She smiled as Kelly, her makeup artist, dusted her eyes with sparkles and her cheeks with shimmer and her lips with shine. And then another stagehand flew through the door of her dressing room with another vase of roses, and that's when the trip down memory lane ended.

"These ones are from Finn Moriarty."

Her eyes went wide as she giggled into her oversized Tennessee Titans sweater, the one that belonged to Finn, and then finished puckering her lips and fluffing her hair.

"Tell Finn I said thank you."

"What about George Clooney?" Meg teased her as she brought her black dress towards the chair. "Aren't his flowers as good as any first-string quarterback's?"

Isabelle just rolled her eyes with a lasting laugh as she pulled off her jeans and sweatshirt, slipping into the glittering black number. Her head poked out again with a wild blast of her dancing curls and she zipped the back with one last decent breath. Too soon did she think about Finn again, the answer to all of her problems and all of her miseries and worst, all of her daydreams. He'd filled the gap that she'd come to accept was never going to be filled with a guitar swinging, paint dabbling Irishman. He'd warmed her heart and treated her better than any man before Roux had and any man after him for that matter. Finn was a catch, a multi-millionaire with a star throwing arm, the one that Dirk had only ever used on her. Finn took her to nice restaurants but still knew how to barbecue. He liked to go to art exhibits but always made time to cuddle through a good movie. And best of all, was that he was only hers. No other women to speak of. No accidental children to speak of. Nothing but him.

"Five minutes, Isabelle!"

She was brought back from her inward judgment of her relationship with Finn, at the sound of the crowd outside calling her name, begging for her. She had five minutes before she would face them for the first time in this capacity, before her tour began and her monumental climb to the top was capped off by the sound of her voice radiating through the ricocheting panels a hundred feet in the air. She had five minutes until the old Isabelle became the all new Isabelle, the famous Isabelle, the one that had always dreamed of being a solo act. And maybe it was that last point that stood as the only reason for her being unable to shake the image of Roux's face from her mind that whole day, and especially all evening. Maybe it was that, the thought of him silent and pretending to be speechless, the notes on napkins that had led to her very first independent performance on a stage; that made her want to break down and cry.

In her mind she was screaming, _I want him here. I want him to sing with me again. I can't do this alone. _

But then she was hearing two things simultaneously. The first was Fiona, a scathing witch of a woman with a hidden agenda that she still had no proof of, too afraid to find out. From the red-lipped devil of her worst nightmares, all she heard was, _'I wouldn't wish on you, what's become o' my nights spent with him.' _And the second was soft, honest and loving, when he whispered quietly for only her to ever hear or know, _'I'm just going t' chase ye all night if you run…'_

She wondered, apart from everything else, why he'd never made good on that promise.

* * *

**Garden Arena**** - - ****6 minutes later**

Being under the wing of Rolling Stone's most popular journalist was a blessing in a million and one disguises, something he'd never quite needed to test, but now, was glad he had. From fifty feet off the ground, staring down at the wildly anxious crowd of an uncountable measure, Roux was blown fresh out of the sanity of his own mind when he leaned on the railing of the magazine's private box, eyes catching every moment of his Izzie's entrance into the world of mega-artists.

"_Ladies and Gentleman_…" the announcer sounded off radically, as though he'd been dipping his fingers into the fiery pit of Vegas' underground drug world far too greedily. Roux laughed off the thought and concentrated on the swirling spotlights dancing across the stage. "…_all the way from Paris, Tennessee_…_here to perform for you tonight_…" His boot tapped anxiously on the sticky floor, the beer in his hand sloshing only slightly as the nerves rose in his back when the lights dimmed all the more. Then the moment of truth came and he found himself reciting the words as the imaginary speaker did, "…_Miss Isabelle Taylor_…"

To say it was surreal would be dangerously teetering on the edge of a lie. To say it was life-changing for him would be even worse a slight of mouth. To say that hearing her name whirl through the speakers of a stadium, to hear it in the breathless chant of a twenty-thousand strong crowd was an epiphany that he needed desperately. Now that would be the perfect description for this moment. But not nearly as perfect as her.

And then there she was.

Slow motion erupted in his mind, his vision becoming something of a predator to its prey in that moment, as she skipped across the blackened stage, into the illumination of a single spotlight, waved to her audience like a child to a long-missed friend, and fell immediately, if not sooner, into the thing that she was absolutely meant for. His Izzie sang her heart out without the drop of a single dime to ruin her chances. She breathily crooned and whispered and shouted a dozen and one words that meant nothing to him so soon, but with minutes of uninterrupted bliss, of watching her from a perched distance of impossibility, he realized she had a message, a good one, and he did what he'd always done best. Roux sank into the railing, leaning as far as the glass safe haven would take him, and danced on the whim of her every melodious syllable.

**I've stood at the bottom of some walls,**

**I thought I couldn't climb. **

**I felt like Cinderella at the ball, just running out of time. **

**So I know how it feels to be afraid**

**And to think that it's all gonna slip away**

**Hold on, hold on…**

Isabelle spun around the microphone, her twinkling silver guitar swaying with every move of her hips and every flutter of her black dress. She stomped her same old boots onto the stage with every jump and leap and twist and skip she made towards the band, or the crowd. She rocked the world over a million and one times in a single verse, so that when the chorus rolled around, he was already breathlessly disgusted with the tightness in his jeans.

**Here's to you free souls, you firefly chasers**

**Tree climbers, porch swingers, air guitar players.**

**Here's to you fearless dancers, shaken' walls in your bedrooms**

**There's a lot of wonder left inside of me and you**

**Thank God even crazy dreams comes true…**

Nothing about anything she did was stopping him one bit as she went on with her manic ownership of the whole universe. Nothing Isabelle was singing or dishing out to the crowd, to him unknowingly, was making Roux want to turn around and forget why he was here in the first place. Nothing about her scared him, or made him want to go for second rate and replace her with Fiona, or worse, not chase after her for the rest of his life. He swore that he would, and he hadn't kept his promise. He knew he had to now, with no exceptions, ever.

She sang to him, in his mind, for the rest of the night, never realizing that she was truly doing just that from her position on the stage. As she looked out over the mass of bounding, hand stretching, eye popping fans, people who loved her for who she was, for what she wanted to prove to the world, they were all one person in truth. Every smile and every moving pair of lips that matched the lyrics she sang to them was Roux, only ever Roux. He was her founder from what felt like forever ago. He had been the man to grab her off the street, almost literally, throw her onto a stage, not so literally, and let her talent shine right through. He was the one that said, _'sing for me'_, and showed her just what she was worth.

And to Isabelle Marie Taylor--the girl from nowhere's-ville, who ran off to find safety and instead found love and some others good things along the way--meeting Roux had been the turning point of it all, good or bad, right or wrong, a lie or not. He'd been hers, and now she was somehow the whole world's, because of it.

**I've met some go-getters, some difference makers,**

**Small town heroes and big chance takers. **

**I've met some young hearts with something to prove—**

**Here's to you long shots, you dark horse runners.**

**Hair brush singers, dashboard drummers**

**Here's to you wild magnolias, just waiting to bloom—**

**There's a little bit of that inside of me and you**

**Thank God even **_**crazy dreams come true**_**…**

* * *

**3 hours later ****- -**

Between kisses on her jaw and the swallow of her sweating neck, Finn told her just how it was he felt about her through abbreviated speech. "You. Were. Amazing." Isabelle laughed as she held onto him, afraid she would melt to a puddle on the floor where he had her pinned to the wall of her dressing room. "I. Love. You. I. Love. You. _I love you, Is_…"

She'd sort of waited to hear it, for that moment to come. After four months of dating and perfect nights and endless jet-setting on the coattails of her tall, dark and handsome quarterback, she had known it was on its way. But that didn't stop her throat from closing up or her tongue from drying inside of his mouth, or her heart from racing with every touch he made to her already tingling skin.

"I love you, Isabelle. Let's celebrate."

She smiled up at him with concern in her eyes. "Finn. Don't you want to hear me say, 'I love you' too?"

"Do you want to say it, sweetie?"

He held her face in his hands, soothing her anxiousness and warming her still balmy skin from performing.

"I'm not sure yet," she admitted quietly. "I don't know."

Finn hadn't expected much else. He'd known her history with men, bad men; men with reputations for turning her into either a punching bag or a second rate, foreign candidate. He was ready to take his time with her, and had from the start, never pushing, never demanding, and simply adoring every bit of beauty that she radiated. He only had to have her for now, with or without the certainty of absolute, convicted love. It wouldn't change his mind either way.

"Let me know when you do know, alright Ace?"

Her heart fluttered all over again with the nickname, and the easy-going spirit in his eyes, and his kiss, when his mouth touched her warmly again. She went quiet and breathless and pimply-skinned that much quicker. And worst of all, was that hours from that moment, she would wonder if that had been the moment, all along, that he'd been there, the man in the shadows of the hallway, stopping to tell her something important and worthy and honest and promising. She would wonder at the upscale restaurant that Finn took her to in the Paris hotel, whether that had been the same time period in which she had been glued under the Super Bowl weight of a man that held only half of what the second party did inside of her. She would then be forced to wonder, while the secret weapon of the Titans' offense covered her in lingering kisses, from head to toe and back to her lips all night, whether that was the instance, in that dressing room and at the disposal of the man licking her clean of sweat, that Roux had been there, leaving her one final sworn guarantee on the doorknob.

She would wonder forever about that note, on that unused MGM napkin, taped to her door, or at least until she deciphered:

**Vous e****tes le meilleur que j'ai jamais eu.**

And she would wonder about that dangling silver chain, that swaying diamond ring on her room door, for the rest of the night, for the rest of the week, and arguably, the rest of that month.

* * *

(Song by **Carrie Underwood**, _Crazy Dreams_)


	19. Back to You

**Chapter 18: Back to You**

**Somewhere over the Atlantic****- - ****One month later**

"Okay. Tell me about this bitch again."

Isabelle laughed, causing her soda to bubble over through the straw in her mouth. She wiped the caffeine from her glossy lip and rested her head back to the leather seat, staring into Meg's need-to-know, baby blue glare. Behind her assistant, her best friend, her absolute confidante, was nothing but ocean.

"She's gorgeous. And by gorgeous, I mean the kind of beautiful that you can't put in a magazine. The pages would catch on fire."

Meg rolled her eyes, not caring to think that anyone was more beautiful than Isabelle.

"He's known her forever, since they were kids in Ireland I think. She plays the violin like nobody's business and the last I heard--from her of course--she was having his baby."

"And that was the day you left?"

"Yeah."

"And he doesn't know you're coming back?"

"No. Why should he? He didn't tell me he was coming to Las Vegas."

A single nod from Meg was her understanding enough and she flipped back another page of her Cosmo Girl as Isabelle returned to ogling out of the window. It had been forever since she'd been over this ocean, or at least it felt that way. Her music was only just starting to catch on in cities like Rome and London, and all of her touring had been done in the United States. The only time Isabelle had even left the country since her excursion to Paris a year ago, had been to take a few weekend trips with Finn to places like Cozumel and Mexico and the Virgin Islands, romantic getaways.

But the romance had fizzled when he finally came to the realization that she wasn't in love with him, but with a memory, one that stared at him every time he tore her clothes off and found the dangling ring of a past lover resting between her breasts. It had gotten to be too much for him to bear, and she didn't blame him. In fact, Isabelle had welcomed Finn to leave her, begged him to run as fast as possible and find someone worthy of him, someone who would make him the happiest he could ever be, the best he ever could be. So he did, but not without forcing her to remain his executive best friend in all matters, forever.

Hence the buzzing of her cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans as they streamlined towards the French coast. She pulled it out and read: **Rock Paris, Ace.** **Steal that damn leprechaun back! **

With subdued laughter that brought her soaring over the Parisian airspace, she pressed her nose to the cool glass, remembering September in all of its glory and breathing deep, ready for the start of something all over again, something altogether too uncannily renewed. She thought of his words incessantly as they descended to the terminal, as she doodled on her hand with a black pen. _Vous êtes le meilleur que j'ai jamais eu…Vous êtes le meilleur que j'ai jamais eu..._ She wanted to write a song, thinking back on the very first time she'd ever mumbled the words to him in a breathless stupor of passion.

'_You're the best I've ever had. Let's do it again.'_

_Hell yeah_, she thought with a wistful grin, a tug of her knitted cap onto her unruly golden spindles, and one last glance at her the message on her hand, **I HEART ROUX**. _Let's do this thing, Izzie. Let's get him all over again._

* * *

**Paris, ****France****- -**** O'Sullivans**** Pub**

After storming the art district, the shoe stores and lingerie boutiques through the upper end of Paris, Isabelle and Meg wandered about the humbled streets of her days long since gone in the city of lights. They sat at the café Roux had first taken her to, watching the boats on the river as they nibbled at apple pastries and plotted quietly over coffee. She took her friend to the old hotel that she'd been forced to stay at with limited funds, and as Meg stood staring up at the building with a teasing giggle, Isabelle couldn't shake the emotion welling in her, or the reminder of that first afternoon that she'd fallen,_ literally_, into the arms of a helpful stranger. And that's also when she remembered that there was only one more place left to go.

They reached O'Sullivans in a rowdy fit, arms tangled together and nervous smiles on their faces. Isabelle felt her knees locking as they crossed the small avenue towards the memorable corner pub. The windows were still dusty but welcoming, the large doors still thick, ancient and brooding, and when she'd made it inside--her new Marc Jacobs pumps smacking the wood floor--she remembered how at home she had always immediately felt here. That _thankfully_, had not changed at all.

"Well?" Meg pushed with a nudge of Isabelle's arm. "Where is everyone?"

The pub, although warm against the chipping September breeze outside, homely as ever and hugging her like an old friend, was entirely too empty. No one tended the afternoon bar, no one was dabbling on a guitar, or chain smoking through the back hall, breaking glasses or fighting over instrumentals or even dancing on the chairs in an attempt to replace a broken bulb somewhere. It was silent when she wandered in and away from Meg's hold, furthering her search as she tiptoed towards the old stairwell, a sigh and shout making little difference.

"Hello?"

No answer.

"Connor--Danny?"

She wasn't surprised at herself that she didn't call out Roux's name, only that the former of the men she did call out for, was trudging from the depths of the cellar, frightening her with a jump in the hall as he emerged. Danny saw Isabelle's golden mane fly around to face him, and with a crazed smile, he dropped a box of Irish rum to the step, gasped and then fell towards her.

"Blondie--that can't be ye, doll?"

She laughed and held her arms out as he lifted her from the floor, spinning her around in the narrow hall, chuckling in her ear with profound surprise. Isabelle squeezed him for all he was worth, breathed him in as if he were what she needed, the tobacco and hops simmering in his clothes and shaggy brown hair. He was close to what she remembered, very near to the scent she needed, but not quite as good. Danny dropped her to her heels again, laughing at the alteration in style since the last time he'd seen her, and held her out in front of him with an examining eye.

"The prettiest little thing t' ever leave the States…"

She gave a twisted smirk, "I'm the only thing you've ever seen from the States."

"Not true," he crooned with a proud gleam. "Saw that Johnny Depp fella wanderin' round th' streets just last week. He's pretty, but I think ye top him Izzie."

"I'm comparable to a man?"

His smile widened as he pinched her cheek. "Yer comparable t' everyone now. Look at ye, a big star. An' to think ye started out in me own father's pub."

With a shake of her head in modesty, she stepped back in his arms and reminded herself to turn to the bar, where she saw Meg hanging near the doorway. Her friend smiled as if she was out of place and Isabelle pulled Danny in her direction.

"If you want to see what real American beauty looks like--" she stopped him in front of a blushing Meg. "Danny, I'd like you to meet my best friend, Meg."

"Meg," he nodded with a gentlemanly stretch of his hand. She placed hers into his, beaming up at him with her wide violet eyes through a veil of cinnamon waves, and shuddered when he kissed her knuckles. "Good t' know ye, lassie."

Her return was a meek, "You too."

Isabelle had never had the intention of shoving Meg into the arms of the same rowdy Irish romantics that had first stolen her own heart, but when she saw her friend's eyes light up beneath Danny's narrowed, focused gaze, she knew it was of little consequence and smiled. When the longing stare between the two ended though, she took back Danny's attention with an uncertain bite of her lip and wandering eye that told him exactly what and who she was looking for. He touched her arm gently and grinned knowingly.

"I know that look."

She didn't respond, aware that it was pointless. He had her figured out.

"That's th' look o' a girl on a mission."

"She is," Meg added teasingly.

Isabelle eventually whispered with a sigh, "He's gone isn't he?"

Danny nodded but refused to stop smiling. "He's gone from Paris. He went back home, doll."

"Back home. To Ireland."

"No," Danny interrupted her conclusion with a shift of eyes between the girls. "Not quite that far this time round."

With one gentle turn of her swirling tea eyes, Isabelle looked to Danny for the confirmation she felt boiling inside of her, the one that said she knew exactly what he meant by 'home.' When he gave her a relieving gesture in his eyes, she had it all, ever answer to every burning question since leaving Nashville.

"Th' last train out o' Paris for the weekend leaves in twenty minutes, though." Her brow creased with concern as she felt her heels rising from the wood floor, ready to run. The inspiration for which was finally derived when Danny leaned in close to her face, smiling with a whisper, "Think ye can make it, Blondie?"


	20. Love Story

**Chapter 19: Love Story**

**Avignon Station ****- - ****Provence, France**

Isabelle's boots hit the pavement of the train station's platform with a desperate sort of thud. She had nothing in tow, no overnight bags, no money save for a crumbled stash of euro in the bra of her white cotton dress. And she had no inhibitions other than the one that told her she was wasting her time.

Her heart pounded as she moved toward the small street streaming down through the hills, the one where half a dozen taxis had stopped for her and Roux, what felt like a lifetime ago now. The sun was sinking, the post town was growing a shaded hue of orange, and there were no cars in sight, only Isabelle, only her nerves and certain stupidity. She thought about what she would find if she ever made it to the next town over, to St. Remy. She wondered if Roux would be right where Danny had insisted he was. She wondered if the woman she had seen absent at O'Sullivans, the one that had told her to leave him in the first place, would be by his side, with a crimson-haired, clover-eyed child in her arms. She wondered until she realized the seconds and minutes ticking by without her, and then she did what she knew now she was so excellent at.

She ran.

It was almost four miles to St. Remy, through boundless fields and crop meadows and rolling hills that twinkled with every new color that arose in the sky. And Isabelle ran all of it, the marathon of love's true test. She darted between the high southern grasses of a place that was warm even under the spell of September's wind. She harrowed through a dozen or more hidden creeks, over derelict fences from a time long since gone, and across the properties of unsuspecting French farmers. She ran with nothing but him on her mind, trying to remember every little detail. There was his face in this place, in only St. Remy, rugged and disheveled and passionate. There was the taste of his mouth, like the richest of wines and the headiest of tobacco smoke. There were his hands, just and lovingly superior and heated at every pore of her skin. There were his arms--his legs--that tangled all around her, locking her to him forever without restraint.

And even that hadn't won against her leap of conclusions all those months ago. Fiona had said one single thing to her, that she was pregnant with his child, that she suspected Roux would want to have a family with her at the news, and Isabelle had made the worst choice of her life, to run from the only person that ever purely loved her.

Now though, after a year of jet-setting and platinum album covers and romancing with an untouchable heart, of taking the entire country and even the world by the string dangling in her hand, Isabelle was running right back to where it all started. She was running down the purple streets of a town she'd never seen before, tumbling through the darkening alleys of a place that filled her with a sense of gratification, in merely being there. Tiny St. Remy was the most powerful place in the world to her. It was a cosmic sort of magnet that seemed to pull her further and further into its depths, closer and closer to the one corner she needed to be. The streets were shadowed with the quieted voices of evening patrons, growing only louder and more distinct as she turned towards the name of the small road Danny had given her in a single shout as she stormed from the pub, _Rue Carnot. _

It was picturesque, in only the way finality can really be. She fell against a tattered old wall, breathing heavily, brow damp with her constant movement and never ceasing storm of the valley. Isabelle's hand was pressed to her heart where it was trying to beat its way from her chest and all she could think to do was stare at the corner of the street, where the truth sat waiting for her, under the illuminated glow of a windowed pub, a light that drew her ever nearer like a fly to the electric zing of a lamppost. _La Gousse d'Ail_, a family operated bistro, was settled at the last crook of the street, luring crowds with its tender harmony, the one that seemed to seep through the very cracks in the walls and the threads of the moth eaten curtains in the windows. It was homely, comfortable even from a distance, and begging Isabelle to step across to the other sidewalk, to enter the radiation of the lights and heat and assembly, to find the man behind the guitar she could distinctly pick out between the other gypsy instrumentals.

_Roux and his guitar, _she thought lovingly, a smile plastered on her face as she walked to the corner of the window and stared inside.

He sat in the center of lively band, perched on a stage like that at O'Sullivans, but not so disconcerted with drunken fans. Where he was, strumming lightly on his rugged olive Gibson, he was safe and sound and wrapped in something that seemed to say he was 'home' instead of just 'welcomed', the way he was in Paris, the way they both had been. The men who surrounded him, their hair dark and tangled, their fingernails on their instruments dirty and labored, their brows strong and their jaws shifty with the lyrics of the music they played, all appeared to be his brothers, instead of just his friends like Connor and Danny. And maybe they weren't in retrospect, maybe they were only his brothers through music, but the uncertainty warmed her all the same as she watched him. The slide of his fingers across the six strings that had once spun a web of tunes for her alone was mesmerizing, and it shot a ripple of warmth along her spine as she remembered just what those fingers had done to her body on the coattails of the summer before.

"_Merci. Merci de venir ce soir."_

The voice of the band's lead pulled her back from all of her memories, and with one hand on the glass of the mirroring window, she watched as the crowd of satisfied guests applauded, whistled and shouted in French gratitude that confused her. There was a shift in the seating on the stage, whispers of things from the patrons as they ate their food and sipped at their wine, and before Isabelle knew what was happening, it was Roux sitting on the stool at the foot of the stage, his guitar propped on his lap as his mouth moved toward the microphone. Her heart began to kick against her chest again and even her hand couldn't calm it this time. It had been too long since she'd heard him sing, let alone the sound of his voice, and as he opened his lips with a smile toward the audience, she gasped and realized that his eyes had somehow driven straight through the shoulders and faces of the masses. His blackened gaze became a wild stare in her direction and it was as if he were peering deep into her soul from the glass separating them. She saw him shake his head with a twisted sort of confusion plastered on his face, as though he were seeing a ghost, and before he could look back and find out the truth, Isabelle was gone from the window and moving into the street again.

His voice though, above the noises of the restaurant, trailed after her.

"_This next song is something that I wrote for an American band a few months ago. This is th' first time I've played it for anyone, so I hoped ye all like it."_

She paused, boots scratching cobblestones and her hands twitchy against the thighs of her dress.

"_It was inspired by an American girl. Go figure."_

The laughter in the crowd was humbling, warm, so much so that Isabelle shifted back on her heels, facing the light of the café again. There was quiet for only a moment, and when it faded away, it drifted to the easy symphony of a steel Gibson, a couple of Fenders, a violin and a piano. Then, above everything else in that tiny building, and in that silent town, and the whole of the surrounding universe, there was nothing but the sound of a lover's voice.

**So ye sailed away**

**Into a grey sky morning.**

**Now I'm here t' stay,**

**Love can be so boring…**

**An' nothing's quite the same now**

**I just say your name now—**

Isabelle was lost without mode to really judge anything but her boots shuffling towards the doorway of the restaurant, towards the tune that was hers. Her hands trembled, her knees shook and her eyes were welling with tears, but she knew none of it. She only knew his voice.

**But it's not so bad**

**You're only th' best I ever had.**

**Ye don't want me back,**

**You're just th' best I ever had…**

'_That was the best I ever had'__, _she heard herself saying all too long ago. _Vous êtes le meilleur que j'ai jamais eu, _he'd written on that napkin. **You're the best I've ever had.** She understood it all so completely now, everything that was between the lines of right and true, wrong and false. And where her gaze turned, around the corner of the doorway, through the weaving heads of the crowd, she saw only one thing, and it's what broke her heart in two. She saw him, tearing the words from his chest with every thrash of his guitar, and evident moisture piercing the corner of his right eye.

**So ye stole my world**

**Now I'm just a phony**

**Remembering th' girl**

**Leaves me down an' lonely…**

**Well send it in a letter**

**Make yourself feel better—**

**But it's not so bad**

**You're only th' best I ever had**

**Ye don't want me back**

**You're just th' best I ever 'ad…**

She put one boot down inside of the café, then the other, stepping up to the level of the tables, of the bar, of the stage four yards away. She didn't pay the listening, paying crowd any mind as she began to weave through chairs and bodies, lulled by the peaceful regret in Roux's voice, the one that said this was the closure, this was her last chance to interrupt his decision to corner her away in his heart and completely forget. She had a matter of seconds, if lucky, to cast her spell again and make him turn his eyes up from the guitar, from the solemn seams where he appeared to be trying to stop the tears from falling with his song.

**An' it might take some time**

**T' patch me up inside**

**But I can't take it,**

**So I—I run away an' hide**

**And I might find in time**

**That ye were always right**

**You're always right…**

Then, as the tune enveloped into a valley of silence, as the strumming and movement and brashness and sound all came to a seducing pause, Roux lifted his eyes instinctually. He half expected to see a bored crowd, or a slumber audience. But instead, he was granted only the haunting omen of his every word. He had sworn he'd seen the muse of her memory through the window, the same way he'd seen her in the reflection of every mirror, as a mirage in every field and street and doorway since she'd left him. This time though, she was feet away, standing in the midst of reality, in the middle of a patronage of listeners that he knew could not be persuaded by his teasing mind. This was real. She, Isabelle--in her cotton dress from the past, her golden curls spiraling down like a waterfall of sunlight, her old brown boots scuffed to absolute perfection—was staring at him, looking straight through him, touching his heart.

Choked up and unable to breath to sing, or sing to conclude the purpose of the song, he waited until he saw her smile and mouth the word _'play'__. _And only then, for the first time since forever, did he allow himself to give into the ghost of the girl in his guitar, and only then did he begin playing again, and finish singing her song.

**So you sailed away**

**Into a grey sky morning**

**Now I'm here to stay**

**Love can be so boring—**

**Was it what you wanted? **(she shook her head with a wild grin)

**Could it be I'm haunted? **(and again with tears in her eyes)

Roux took the liberty then, for his own swelling heart, to stand from the stool and leap down from the edge of the stage. He continued to strum at the instrument as he swayed through the tables towards the only risen body, the one that stuck out like a ray of light through a cloudy day, the one that had _Made in the U.S._ written all over her. He loved that about his Isabelle.

**But it's not so bad**

**You're only the best I ever had.**

**You don't want me back **(she nodded ferociously when he stepped towards her)

**You're just the best I ever had…**

As the band continued playing, Roux let the guitar drop from his hands, sliding until it hung by a lone string across his chest, and against his hip. His boot toes matched hers in the middle of the restaurant, amid the startled and whispering customers, the ones that sighed with knowing passion and romanticism at the way he looked into Isabelle's eyes, the eyes of a young girl that some of them recognized from the covers of French _Elle_ and _Marie Claire_. His left hand came out to cradle her cheek as she nuzzled to the touch, her tears running down his palm from her jaw. Her coffee eyes were aglow with something he'd missed badly enough to have killed him. Then he stepped just that much closer and pressed his forehead to hers, both of them lost inside of the dwindling harmony of the band, as he whispered against her nose, _"You're just th' best I ever had, Izzie."_

"You mean it?"

"O' course I do." He kissed the bridge of her nose. "It's all I ever meant."

She sighed then, falling to the place where all the pain had come from, the day that everything had first ended between them. And surprising herself even more than she surprised him, Isabelle noticed the sensation of her feet shifting back from him, her face from his palm, and lastly, herself from the inside of the restaurant as she hurdled through the crowd. There were unsuspecting gasps from the audience, people trying to stop her, trying to hold her back, but she was stronger than the force of hopeless French romantics. She made it to the door with effort and very nearly out of the café.

"Isabelle. Stop."

To her dismay though, she halted. She'd known she would if he told her to. She had never ceased to abide by his desperation, or his pleading demands. With one hand on the panel of the doorway and one boot half out into the night air again, she breathed in deep as the people around her whispered amongst themselves.

"You're not running from me again."

His words stung. Not because he was showing his force over her, but because she knew they were completely true. She wasn't going to run. Instead she turned back to him, to the show down that felt as necessary as his lips at this point.

"I ran because I didn't want to get in the way before."

Roux stepped once closer to her through the gawking townspeople.

"Wot' did ye think you'd be in the way o', honestly Isabelle?"

"Of everything." Her voice doubled against his. "I was already in the way when I came to Paris. I was in the middle of you and Fiona and--"

"There was nothing t' be in the middle of," he cut her off. "Fiona an' I--"

To which she returned the favor with a hasty step inward. "I know all about you and her. I know that there was something there. Maybe it wasn't what you felt for me, but it was enough."

"Wot' are ye talking about, love?"

"The baby, Roux."

With her solemn response, came the lull of the crowd. He stared at her from feet away, his hands subconsciously drawn into fists as his brow furrowed with anger. In his mind, Roux saw Fiona. He saw her coercing lips and her bare skin beneath him, where he'd taken out the pain of his missing Isabelle for almost five months prior. Then he saw Fiona storming out of the pub the same day he'd found Isabelle on the cover of _Rolling Stone_. He saw her with her bags and a scowl. He saw her with her lying eyes, the ones that he'd always somehow known were keeping something important from him, something that she herself had obviously stirred.

"Fiona said she was pregnant with your child. I didn't want to be involved."

He shook his head with a gaping jaw. "So ye ran, without mentioning the reason t' me then?"

Isabelle was frozen under his words, mostly because he was right to say them.

"I didn't want to get hurt again."

"I would never hurt you. I've told ye that, Izzie."

"I know, but--"

"But nothing." He filled in the gap between them, and with the force that only love can ever shelter in a man he took her face in both of his hands, his fingers twirled gingerly through her blonde curls. "There is no baby. There is no Fiona. There's nothing but me, darling."

There were a few passionate sighs from nearby women and Isabelle regarded them as her sign. That combined with the burning fury of truth in his eyes that resonated tears in hers.

"I loved only you, Isabelle. Never er',_ ever_. It was just you."

She nodded peaceably in his hands. "And do you still--" then breath choked her and she gulped. "Do you still love me?"

Everyone's breath was held with hers. She stared longingly up at him, begging him to take her back to where they used to be, to the places his song had conjured through memory. And Roux was just as eager, just as determined to make her his all over again. He rode the wave of anxiousness in the crowd and in Isabelle, dropping his face to hers, nearly touching her lips when he released the tension that brought the entire swarm of locals to their knees, right alongside the American girl that had stormed their pub.

"Wot' the hell do ye think, love?"

Isabelle's tears were cut by her laughter.

"I think you love me like I love you."

"Like crazy?"

She pressed her lips to his with an undertone, "_Like crazy_," and the pub was washed away into a contented fit of starry-eyed ovation.

* * *

(Song by **Gary Allen**, written by **Vertical Horizon**—_Best I Ever Had_)


	21. The Heart of Life

**Chapter 20: The Heart of Life**

**One year later - - ****St. Remy de Provence**

The table was set for six and half. A three generational silk tablecloth blew in the breeze of early October, threatening the scattered candles lit against the sunset pink sky. Only the best of china, indigo porcelain painted with winery vines, were strategically placed at each seating, waiting to be covered in the food that came out bowl by bowl, recipe by loving, ancient recipe. There was Endive salad with walnuts and lemon dressing, broiled scallops, roasted duck with olives and garlic potatoes, a cheese soufflé, and per request of a certain sweet-toothed companion, facing north toward Paris, sat a chocolate truffle cake with extra mousse. It was her most profound accomplishment, as far as only she was concerned.

"_Izzie_--"

The sound of his voice startled her, the way it also appeared to be. She tried to balance her toes on the stool ledge, reaching into the highest cabinet for a bowl that she insisted was just the right one for the baked bread.

"Get down."

"I almost have it."

"Isabelle."

It had changed to a stern determination, the kind she could never ignore. So she reached down for his hand to guide her off the stool, slowly, until her bare feet reached the ancient tiles of the kitchen floor again. He shook his head at her with a sigh and then finished the task himself, handing her the bowl with warning in his eyes.

"I'm not as helpless as I look."

He didn't return a word at first. He only stared at her defiantly as she moved the slices of bread from the baking sheet to his mother's antiquated bowl, watching him from the corner of her eye.

"Don't look at me like that."

A smirk carefully formed at the corner of his mouth as he reached out and pressed his hand to the firm roundness beneath her flowing peasant dress. His fingers calmed the soft kicking that lied inside, and he caressed her navel as his lips hit her neck.

"Let me do th' climbing for th' next month, Love."

"I am perfectly capable of--"

He stopped her mid claim with a turn of her face to his fully, a capture of her lips between his, softly drawing the defiance from her. Nothing she'd made in her kitchen that day, nothing she'd had hit her lips, had tasted as sweet and sound and perfectly simmered as his mouth did, or his tongue stroking hers. Every bit of her was sensitive to his touch, all the time, at all hours of every day. And with an unsuspecting baby between them, the large consequence of their passionate equation, Roux held Isabelle captive against the counter, his feathery lips dancing over one burning pore after the next.

"I need to finish the--"

"No."

"_Roux_—the oven--"

"It can wait," he mumbled on her earlobe, suckling at it carefully, making her bare toes curl against the tile with his. Without a moment's hesitation, his freed hand moved up her stomach to tease the dire firmness of her left breast, the one that had grown as equally full as the other, readied for the bounds of motherhood. She arched naturally, awkwardly but beautiful towards him from the edge of the counter, a tiny sigh escaping her lips as she heard a door opening and shutting at a distance. Roux refused to slow his ministrations over her body, refused to give in to the way she molded to him, curved and unsuspectingly delicate. Only one thing could quit him now.

"Mystery o' the babe is now solved."

His mouth left the valley of Isabelle's breasts at the front of her dress, and Roux's eyes focused beyond her head, to the kitchen archway, where Danny stood laughing with Meg.

"Is that how ye get th' food t' taste so good, Blondie?"

Isabelle smiled with an embarrassed brow, turning in Roux's protective arms to see her friends. They were early, as usual, merely to appease the privacy of the house at all costs.

"Meg," she gave a teasing smile. "Are you sure you want to marry him?"

"I've had my doubts," she cooed as she patted Danny's cheek.

"All put t' rest on _our_ kitchen counter o' course."

Roux chuckled in Isabelle's ear, holding her tightly for a moment longer, before taking the bottle of wine from the counter, kissing her gently on the top of her forever growing head of curls and following Danny to the veranda setting. It was only a matter of time, as Isabelle finished with the bread and stuffed mushrooms that Connor showed up at the house with his haired attachment. Saline, who Roux and Isabelle had finally learned was Greek, fit in perfectly with the uninhibited crowd of laughers and jokesters and romantics that they seemed to have become. She was happy as she watched them entertaining one another on the patio overlooking the righteous hills of St. Remy, contented to have finally found the sort of family that she'd been after, satisfied just to be for once, instead of trying to be.

Isabelle walked barefoot through the French doors of the kitchen, heading towards the full table with a second, _necessary_, bottle of wine. And even before she'd made it five steps, Roux sensed her coming and left the table to match her in the middle of the grassy terrace.

"Don't even think about it," she tested him with a clear smile as she hugged the bottle of Chardonnay closer to her chest. "I can handle it."

Roux held the protruding bulge that was her stomach--that was his child--as he gently leaned in towards his untamable, American superstar wife, a teasing wink begging at his eye.

"I know ye can."

And he knew she always would. He knew it four weeks later, when in the middle of a sleepless night, the doctor was called in from town to deliver their auburn haired, hazel eyed daughter in the same room that Roux's mother had given birth to him in. He knew it every day after that, when he would watch Isabelle chase Olivia through the gardens surrounding the cottage of his own youth. He knew it when his Izzie began refusing record deals and concert contracts and film scripts from all over the world, to simply stay at home and sing with him, to be his artistic muse in the afternoons when they sent their daughter off to school. He knew it all over place, anywhere she was and anywhere they sailed from the south of France to the banks of the Irish coast or flew to the rocky tops of Paris, Tennessee. His American sweetheart proved the better of him forever, with just a curl of her rose doused lips and a rustle of her honeyed ringlets.

She was the best—_to his best_—that either of them would ever need to have.

* * *

**THE END -- THANK YOU, E.C**


End file.
